MUSIC

In C is a musical piece by the composer and performing musician Terry Riley. As one of the first minimalist compositions and a masterpiece of this genre it's a response to the modern music that dominated the scene in 1968. The piece inspired a lot of famous composers, like Philip Glass and Steve Reich. In C consists of repeating cells and different rhythms, loosely based on the musical structures he had heard and loved in north African music. 53 short musical phrases are what the compositions are made of. The thing that makes In C so enduring is that, once all concept is stripped away, it's a seriously hypnotic piece of music. For listeners with a sympathy for minimalism it's a wild and impressive work, full of energy. 180 gram vinyl.

When Alexander the Great came in 333 B.C. to the Phrygian city of Gordium (located in what is today central Turkey), he was confronted by a puzzle no one could solve. Alexander apparently solved the puzzle, but all that survived from the story is a parable, a legend of the Gordian Knot. In the summer of 2004, many issues I was facing seemed mysterious and unsolvable. This may be why the legend of the Gordian Knot came to my mind when deciding on the title of the piece. The Plains at Gordium was composed from June to August 2004 and is dedicated to Charlotta Kotik. The incentive to compose the piece came from a percussion group in Brno, Czech Republic, who asked me for a piece of music. Not being a commission-disciplined composer, I wrote a piece for six percussionists, while the Czech group, DAMA-DAMA had only four members and could not perform it. The size of the piece also defies the scale of a standard percussion piece, 1,290 measures over a 108-page score. The Plains at Gordium belongs to a group of compositions that I started in 1971. All of the music is based on a steady pulse. Although the various pieces, for example There is Singularly Nothing, John Mary, If I Told Him, Many Many Women, and many more, are independent compositions, parts of them can be mixed in a collage-like performance. The common, steady pulse is what can unify all the different parts, performed simultaneously, into a coherent whole. In a way, all these compositions, written from the 1970s to early ‘80s, can be regarded as one endless continuous piece with changing instrumentation. In 1977, I began composing a percussion piece entitled Drums, adding pages and pages to it. It cannot really be said that the piece was finished in 1981, I just stopped adding pages to the score. Drums envisions any number of players (minimum of 2), each with a differently tuned set of four drums, all locked into a steady pulse. It can be performed simultaneously with parts of other compositions from this period, instrumental and vocal (the vocal parts use texts by Gertrude Stein and later by R. Buckminster Fuller). The Plains at Gordium follows the same basic idea, without the intention of making collage-like additions or performing parts of it with other compositions (although there were performances with some vocal segments from There is Singularly Nothing). Unlike the early pieces, it sometimes takes off, doubling in tempo. Also, bells have been added here, in addition to the set of six differently tuned drums for each player. - Petr Kotik, March 2021

LP reissue, originally released as Eternal Now on Sonet Records in 1973. Don was living in Sweden at the time and made 2 great spaced-out records (in the freeform "Universal Music" style) for Sonet (Live Ankara being the other) -- the prior CD reissue of this material has seemingly disappeared into the wind. If this album had been made by some Vietnam vet living in a windowless cove in Northern California -- with a picture of leaves on the cover, no less -- it would have made the NWW list and originals would be fetching more than a used car, today. As an unfortunate aside, this LP reissue features the vastly inferior American cover as used by Picc-a-dilly, compared to the screaming ethno-psychedelic visuals favored by Sonet. The fact that he is shown wearing a suite that he certainly wasn't wearing during this recording, playing an instrument that he certainly wasn't playing during this recording -- apparently these details fazed no one. "Piano and percussion dominate this rare recording from sessions in April of 1973. No cornet or trumpet. Cherry sings and plays piano, gamelan, harmonium, and assorted percussion. The other musicians are: Christer Bothen (piano, etc.), Bernt Rosengren (taragot, a Swedish wooden soprano saxophone), Agneta Ernstrom (Tibetan bell, etc.), Bengt Berger (piano, mridangam, etc.)."

Minimalist music evangelist Terry Riley's 1968 masterpiece "A Rainbow In The Curved Air" influenced numerous musicians.From The Who to many techno artists, this is a classic album that continues to influence us.