4. Steve Reich1965 – 1995
A satisfyingly Partridgian ‘Best Of’ choice here which is a bit of a cop out, I know; but let me dad this out. If I had to choose just one I’d probably go Clapping for its simple immediacy. Or Drumming? Or Music For 18 Musicians… ughh, it’s impossible. I was pleased to find out that this uber-comp offered me a way to greedily choose all of them and more.
This is really it for me, music that is both a fascinating mechanism and also gets you on a primitive level. It’s the whole package. Like people who care more if something is an original pressing or a reissue than which version of the mixes is printed on it, my enthusiasm for there being a concept or theory that generates the music suggests that maybe I’m less attached to music than I would like to admit. But there’s something that I’d compare to the feeling you get when you appreciate the beauty of an elegant mathematical proof here. Yes, it’s mechanical, but there’s also the sense that it’s elemental, some law of nature that’s expressed cleanly and makes you remember that the universe is wonderful and that’s an emotional response.
It seems that most people want a strong personality to front the music and I’ve never really been a big subscriber to that. I take it on the chin that my desire for the music to be a geometric construction as well as an earworm is just as unmusical as your desire for the singer to have a heroin habit and act all heroic – we can accommodate each other’s preferences.
