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http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000005IYU/102-8554598-0878500?v=glance
but i bet you'd like it
"popularly regarded as repetitive and minimalist"
-wikipedia
"Reich is one of the founding fathers of contemporary minimalism: an offshoot of the classical avant-garde that takes repetition as its raison d’être and explores its possibilities over extended compositions."- ambient music guide
Different Trains is truly different. Steve Reich has characteristically developed yet another intriguingly original way of composing. This time he is using recordings of people talking but has added stringed instruments to the words so that the notes match the 'melody' of th
e spoken word exactly. When we talk we virtually 'sing' the words but in a limited range of pitches, occasionally hitting a higher note when we emphasise a word or ask a question. And so, for a breathless 27 minutes, the Kronos Quartet race across this landscape of semi-demi-quavers like a runaway train, changing tracks and occasionally slowing through tunnels, but always urging us forward, chasing an unending horizon towards a final destination. The sampled voices add a further dimension to this already appealing stampede of notes. As a child, between 1939 and 1942, Reich used to frequently cross America by train with his governess, and so he has used phrases of a recent interview with the old lady to create the staccato 'melody'. "From Chicago to New York" she repeats, "...one of the fastest trains", whilst the Kronos Quartet overlays three separate recordings of pulsating, discordant strings. A retired railway porter, now in his eighties, also adds his reflections of the railroad days: "from New York to Los Angeles... but today, they're all gone". But what makes this mad rush across the continent so poignant is not so much the antique reminiscences of the spoken words, or the romance evoked by the sounds of steam train whistles, but rather the addition of phrases spoken by Holocaust survivors. As a Jew, Reich is now very conscious of the sad and almost arbitrary reality that if he had been in Europe at this time he would have been riding on very different trains. "Into those cattle wagons... they were loaded up with people... for 4 days and 4 nights... and then we went through these strange sounding names... Polish names... they shaved us... they tatooed a number on our arm... flames going up to the sky - it was smoking... don't breathe!" In musical terms "Different Trains" takes us on a uniquely mesmeric journey, but with its sobering twists recollected by witnesses to the horrors of recent history, this journey seems to take us across an emotional Great Divide as much as a physical one. Compelling.
now you post one
but i bet you'd like it
"popularly regarded as repetitive and minimalist"
-wikipedia
"Reich is one of the founding fathers of contemporary minimalism: an offshoot of the classical avant-garde that takes repetition as its raison d’être and explores its possibilities over extended compositions."- ambient music guide
Different Trains is truly different. Steve Reich has characteristically developed yet another intriguingly original way of composing. This time he is using recordings of people talking but has added stringed instruments to the words so that the notes match the 'melody' of th
e spoken word exactly. When we talk we virtually 'sing' the words but in a limited range of pitches, occasionally hitting a higher note when we emphasise a word or ask a question. And so, for a breathless 27 minutes, the Kronos Quartet race across this landscape of semi-demi-quavers like a runaway train, changing tracks and occasionally slowing through tunnels, but always urging us forward, chasing an unending horizon towards a final destination. The sampled voices add a further dimension to this already appealing stampede of notes. As a child, between 1939 and 1942, Reich used to frequently cross America by train with his governess, and so he has used phrases of a recent interview with the old lady to create the staccato 'melody'. "From Chicago to New York" she repeats, "...one of the fastest trains", whilst the Kronos Quartet overlays three separate recordings of pulsating, discordant strings. A retired railway porter, now in his eighties, also adds his reflections of the railroad days: "from New York to Los Angeles... but today, they're all gone". But what makes this mad rush across the continent so poignant is not so much the antique reminiscences of the spoken words, or the romance evoked by the sounds of steam train whistles, but rather the addition of phrases spoken by Holocaust survivors. As a Jew, Reich is now very conscious of the sad and almost arbitrary reality that if he had been in Europe at this time he would have been riding on very different trains. "Into those cattle wagons... they were loaded up with people... for 4 days and 4 nights... and then we went through these strange sounding names... Polish names... they shaved us... they tatooed a number on our arm... flames going up to the sky - it was smoking... don't breathe!" In musical terms "Different Trains" takes us on a uniquely mesmeric journey, but with its sobering twists recollected by witnesses to the horrors of recent history, this journey seems to take us across an emotional Great Divide as much as a physical one. Compelling.now you post one
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