Steve Reich : Music for 18 musicians (question)

ECM forever!

However, was in a shop in Providence last weekend & spotted a copy of this in the "New Arrivals" bin: https://www.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/reich-ensemble-modern-synergy-vocals-steve-tokyo-opera-city-21-5-lp/FOX.019LP.html

Bought it out of duty--guess it's not technically out for a few more days--& it's great although the sound significantly drops out toward the end of side one. Not sure if the original master was fucked or what. Are there any other commercially available versions out there w/ Reich as part of the ensemble aside from the ECM, Nonesuch, & this one?

https://erikhall.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-18-musicians-steve-reich

I’m so lame my copy is the Grand Valley State University New Music something-or-other version

supporting talented young people, that's good

Will def check this out. I listened to Drumming today, so good.

more than one review i've seen has called it 'reverent', and its 'arrangement' choices certainly aren't very adventuresome—it would have been something to hear him try something more with the moog than just mimic a bass clarinet—but it does have this odd quality that comes from the composition, like on other newer versions but more highlighted, where it seems like you just can't get away from it, if you play it in rhythm and with something like the full complement of personnel, so it doesn't sound like a different version, just like you're suddenly hearing bits of the same thing that you never heard that way before. you know it's different to hear it with guitars or a moog or whatever, but at the same time the way the composition activates your memory is so obliterating that you can't really remember what the difference amounts to.

reportedly he added some 'room air' to the parts as he recorded them, it seems like it would be more interesting to hear what a version WITHOUT 'air' sounded like. as is it seems like all versions are rather dependent on that air for some of their more attractive qualities.

This is a really interesting and effective arrangement and it sounds great. Won't replace the live acoustic recordings ofc but does something new.

xps ha

I guess I wasn't expecting a radical reimagining. It's a notated work; idrg what 'reverent' means in that context. I do feel like something is changed pretty significantly by using a drum machine and overdubbing the parts one at a time - there's a level of mechanical precision beyond what you get from live musicians playing together in real time.

it's notated but i guess i think of it as kind of existing within spitting distance of vernacular semi-notated or improvised music for which 'cover versions' of records (not compositions alone exactly) have led us to expect more of re-visitations. so it's hard for it to escape perceptions of reverence.

i hadn't noticed a machine, you mean just that he is tracking/gridding the parts (presumably because it would have been impossible to keep them straight recording one at a time?)?

i don't care that much for the ecm version so maybe this is true of it too, but it seems like one thing he did here unsmooths differences between the sections somewhat.

It does sound gridded, yeah, which is probably the key difference I was hearing. There is a credit for a Roland CR-68 drum machine on the Bandcamp page so I figured at least one of the parts was programmed on that but I couldn't identify which it would be.

There’s only a few sounds that a CR-68 can make

Can you pick it out in the recording?

I admire the devotional aspect but the identical arrangement with simpler timbres makes me feel like I'm listening to a low bitrate MP3 of the ECM recording

I think the CR-68 is used to emulate the maracas/shakers

starting in section VI

Ah ha, that makes sense.

I'm enjoying the textures on this version. It would be interesting to hear or make a fully electronic/programmed version though (not saying it would be good, part of the magic is the super tight but still human playing that keeps the loops from getting stale).

i would love to hear a keith fullerton whitman version

or tbh one with some fuckin amen breaks

This is making me want to dig out my copy of Reich Remixed, which might be a mistake, it's been so long.

Oh dear, yeah...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl6hCtDes24

thinking of getting four or five versions up and shuffling them track by track for some super chaotic energy

There was a version done on 18 synths in a cathedral in Dublin a few years ago. Was absolutely great.

For a second there my estimation for Val Kilmer really went up
(Val Kilmer is not involved)

Wow. Just wow. Val Wilmer, on meeting Steve Reich, in @dubdobdee’s brilliant new book on the UK music press, A Hidden Landscape Once A Week. pic.twitter.com/GhBDEKsO5p

— Andrew Male (@Andr6wMale) January 25, 2019

she relates the same anecdote, without naming reich explicitly, in the first few pages of "as serious as your life"

does he not disparage ornette coleman specifically in that anecdote also? poopooing his third stream skies of america?

lol thats depressing

xp no, that story is about members of the london philharmonic talking shit about SOA, which they'd been hired to play. the steve reich story follows closely. the whole point of the introduction being a kind of litany of instances where black musicians aren't taken seriously by "important" white composers and institutions.

ah, thanks for correcting me

Steve "Third" Reich

Rumoured to be a Trump supporter too, to top it all off.

Music For 18 MAGAtts

dammit

There is a specific ilx user who could expand on this anecdote, perhaps.

i feel like "fuck Steve Reich" adequately covers it tbh

I wonder how he feels about this album:

https://img.discogs.com/VcD39kal21pROlL87dUykuVODHE=/fit-in/500x495/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-966800-1391803047-1748.jpeg.jpg

Trump on Reich, in his 2009 book "Think Like a Champion" https://t.co/ijQvlEuioZ pic.twitter.com/8rVwAigl0h

— Will Robin (@seatedovation) November 2, 2016

not that trump actually wrote that tho

Don Van Vliet based the rhythm of 'Bat Chain Puller' on the wipers in his Volvo, maybe Trump likes Beefheart too

Also fuck Steve Reich

Hmmm…

https://www.motherjones.com/anti-racism-police-protest/2020/07/how-steve-reich-made-music-out-of-white-complicity/

what the fuck, I did not need this

Is this the part where I'm allowed to say I never liked him as much as everyone else anyway? (This is true btw.)

This is a good take.

Steve Reich is probably one of the most over performed composers of all time. Less Reich only means more obscure stuff getting a foot in = win win win.

— Fielding Hope (@fieldinghope) September 8, 2020

otm

Piece doesn’t mention that Come Out was created as a benefit to aid the Harlem Six, this Pitchfork piece has a bit more on the background to its creation. https://pitchfork.com/features/article/9886-blood-and-echoes-the-story-of-come-out-steve-reichs-civil-rights-era-masterpiece/

Makes more recent comments all the more dispiriting.

Not the first Jew of his generation to go from civil rights ally to trump supporter.

As long we get to keep Riley I'm fine

the trump thing feels a bit unsubstantiated

If not a full Trump supporter. A Reagan Democrat. I speak from close first hand knowledge of the political evolution of the New York metropolitan area boomer Jew.

Haha so am I! sorry got our wires crossed (just checked whether Rzewski had twitter) xp

MEV invented twitter iirc

Free music lessons ended a long time ago and I think most local authorities no longer even subsidise them either - although as with most things in the UK it depends upon your postcode.

fwiw, somewhat of a response on his Twitter today

Steve Reich’s response to last week’s article in The Guardian by Philip Clark: pic.twitter.com/5Kek546yxE

— Steve Reich (@SteveReich) September 16, 2020

Was listening to Inside Music at the weekend on Radio 3 and Tai Murray played a selection from Drumming, which I thought was kinda interesting.