A suitably outrageous picture disc.

‘If it is the radical edge of uncompromising hardcore minimalism that you are after, this reissue of Four Organs and Phase Patterns delivers two key examples.
‘‘I am interested in perceptible processes’ Reich had written in 1968. ‘I want to be able to hear the processes happening throughout the sounding music.’ Four Organs is a radical realisation of this goal. Against the steady rattle of maracas, individual tones within a single chord are gradually lengthened. No changes of pitch or timbre occur, and the drawn out nature of the process provoked outrage at some early performances, when audiences found themselves caught up in a decelerating loop, being dragged towards stasis. Phase Patterns, composed a month later, relies on a phasing technique developed during Reich’s earlier experiments with magnetic tape recordings, which he allowed to drift out of sync. Identical figures initially in unison shift out of phase, generating unexpected patterns.’
‘Obviously music should put all within listening range into a state of ecstasy’ (Steve Reich).
Vinyl from Aguirre.

It’s Gonna Rain is a total knockout.
Steve Reich’s first official piece is spun out of a chance encounter with a Pentecostalist preacher at work in San Francisco’s Union Square Park in 1964.
“He’s talking about the flood in the Bible and Noah and the ark, and you’ve got to remember the Cuban missile crisis was in ‘62, and this was something hanging over everyone’s head ... that we could be so much radioactive dust in the next day or two. So this seemed very appropriate…. There are two loops of his voice, starting in unison. And then one slowly creeps ahead of the other — I just did it with my thumb on the recording reel of one of the machines. And so they go out of phase. It’s like a canon or a round, like Row, Row, Row Your Boat. And you get first a kind of shaking, a reverberation, and then you get a sort of imitation and gradually you begin to hear it as a round. And that’s exactly what happens in this piece.”
Apocalyptic, riveting, banging, urgent, game-changing… it’s killer.

Aka Georgia Ann Muldrow.

‘Committed to tape on February 20, 1979… a real declaration of identity for Loren. He was introducing himself publicly as a guitar player, although his approach was still very much dictated by the influence of the painter, Mark Rothko, who Loren once described as using a minimal palette to create vital art… The feel to this session is bluesy, in as much as Loren’s wordless vocals have a surface similarity to a hellhound’s, and while he was not using a slide, most of the notes he plays are bent to the edges of their known range. Fahey always said blues was ‘about’ anger, though there’s not really any of that here. I am more reminded of this Rothko quote. ‘You’ve got sadness in you, I’ve got sadness in me ... and my works of art are places where the two sadnesses can meet, and therefore both of us need to feel less sad.’ The first side is solo. On the second Loren is joined for a bit by Kath on hums and recorder. The music brims with sorrow more than anything else. And while it’s clear Loren was embracing an abstract avant garde aesthetic vis-a-vis his playing, the urge to communicate seems to lie at its roots. Whatever you choose to call it, this is the beginning of something quite beautiful’ (Byron Coley).

With Dub Judah.

‘Classic Vinyl Series.’