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Steve Reich’s Conversations: A Humanist’s Guide to Minimalism

The avant-garde composer’s book of conversations shares ruminations on life, spirituality, and music

Reich, recently turned 87

Conversations by Steve Reich (2022)

When worshiping the transcendent and euphoric pedagogy of music, time is ever-present. Off-beat clave rhythms contort bodies in expected intervals; canonic textures layer pieces with feverish counterpoints; prayers float freely in time, bouncing off intricately stained windows. Impactful music—music overflowing with humanity—changes time’s objective qualities to subjective ones. It’s with this knowledge and conviction about the elements of spiritually awakened music that New York native (and Cornell alum!) Steve Reich entered the ‘60s classical music scene. Now a veteran composer, Reich’s six decades of fostering and pushing classical minimalism’s development forward has left him with a legacy of his commitment to musical exploration. Marked by precise and hypnotically repetitive canons, his compositions stand as a modern-day landmark to the fact that music is a tool for us to explore both ourselves and our perceptions of the world. In a celebration of this, Reich wrote Conversations in 2022: a biography of his career which is explored and dissected through 19 chapters neatly divided by conversations conducted with 19 fellow luminaries.

The conversationalists span from Radiohead’s Johnny Greenwood to Reich’s own wife, video artist Beryl Korot. Though the range of people brought into the book is staggering, Reich’s candor in talking with these figures helps makes chapters cogent and incredibly approachable for those less acquainted with his compositions. However, despite this general approachability, the book is clearly designed for Reich superfans. Nearly all of his works are explored (spanning from 1965 to 2019) and at times musical jargon can obfuscate themes and ideas that rear their philosophical roots. Luckily, these moments are few and far between. For those interested in learning more about his works or wanting to gain further insight into the broad field of minimalism and its implications, this is an important read.

In discussing Reich’s transformative contributions to the world of music, it’s inevitable to draw comparisons to other classical music trailblazers. The most prominent one being Stravinsky, which Reich himself notes in the forward of Conversations. Both of their most enduring compositions were perturbing enough to induce actual riots at performances (which renowned conductor Michael Tilson Thomas’s comments in Conversations delightfully underscored), and there’s the obvious comparison between Conversations and Stravinsky’s 1959 book of conversations. Fortunately, it’s the paradigm-shifting parts of Stravinsky that manifest in Reich through Conversations. Compared to Stravinsky’s cluttered narrative in his book of conversations, Reich’s discussions are at their best illuminating and help to create an easily accessible roadmap of his career. And it’s through inroads in this map, like with Kronos Quartet’s director David Harrington, that we glean bits of knowledge into Reich’s inspirations, whether that be waitresses clapping as an inspiration for his aptly named Clapping Music (1972) or Stravinsky’s tonal serial technique rearing its head in Traveler’s Prayer’s (2019) baroque melodic structure.

The first half of the book focuses on Reich’s coming of age as a composer and 1965 seminal pieces (Come Out and It’s Going to Rain) but does so in a way that elucidates more than just these composition’s experimental phasing technique (though artist Richard Serra’s cross-discipline discussion on these techniques is fascinating). We learn through a question on the nature of language in music from the late domineering composer Stephen Soundheim that Reich was drawn to Come Out’s C minor speech melody because of the simple humanist observation that “when we speak, we sometimes sing.” Considering the political implications of Come Out’s sample—a looping vocal clip of a black man who was wrongfully imprisoned and beaten—layers are added onto how to perceive this piece and Reich’s later works which rely heavily on spliced vocal samples as canons.

Observations like these do more than just inform the content of the compositions Reich created. For Thomas, Reich’s minimalist harmonically grounded works were a “spiritual antidote” that countered the complicated hyper intellectual compositions that were common in the ‘80s avant-garde classical scene. Elizabeth Lim-Dutton, violin player for the Steve Reich Ensemble, later echoes this same sentiment in how the contemporary difference in violin performance for Different Trains—a piece where the violin matches both figuratively and literally spoken words of Holocaust survivors—added a level of emotional resonance not previously achievable.

If sections like these sound like a Reich pander-fest, it’s because they kind of are. However, Reich generally does a good job of steering the conversations away from these moments and towards the unique insight’s conversationalists offer into Reich’s works. Dutton’s thoughtful takeaways on Reich’s pieces—which come from a career’s worth of avant-garde performances—are their conversation’s bread and butter. Personally noteworthy, was her cultural detachment from the biblical story of Abraham which is explored through interviews with Palestinian Muslims and Israeli Jews in Reich and Korot’s opera The Cave (1993). This detachment helped to stress and add to the innovative beauty in the ending melody which highlights the shared beliefs between both groups despite the West’s growing secularization.

Reich doesn’t typically write political pieces so when he does, there’s an incredibly precision and delicateness he approaches these works with. Dutton hits it on the nose here. What makes The Cave so special is the beauty and exactness that it uses when approaching such a sensitive topic. Made (in my eyes) somewhat in response to post-minimalist composer John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer (1991), an opera about Palestinian terrorists murdering a disabled Jewish man, Reich chose to design an opera highlighting both group’s similarities in cultural/religious thought through three movements. Reich’s most political work, Daniel Variations (2016), takes it a step further in a commemoration of journalist Daniel Pearl’s life who was killed by Pakistani Islamic fundamentalists. What Reich calls his strongest writing for strings in Conversations is a truly transcendent piece that celebrates the life and Judaic implications behind the name Daniel, rather than the uproar that was left in the wake of Pearl’s stolen life.

One thing undoubtably missing in Conversations, however, is any evaluative discussion about Reich’s works. Concerns about cultural appropriation in Drumming (1970) aren’t present and considering the growing academic discussion on the removal of people of color, women, and queer voices in the field of minimalism (coming to a spearhead in the recently published On Minimalism: Documenting a Musical Movement) a conversation on this by one of the “founding fathers” of the movement would especially be welcomed. Certainly, the influence studying drumming in Ghana and Balinese gamelan in Seattle had on Reich is worth more than just a passing mention!

What is discussed luckily, is Reich’s take on modern music and how he interprets popular music that his works have by and large influenced. As a Radiohead aficionado, I was floored to read that Reich was inspired by Radiohead’s Everything in its Right Place and Jigsaw Falling into Place to compose Radio Rewrite (2012). A composer in touch with players so far out of their own niche—and generation—is rare. During Reich’s talk with Greenwood, they briefly discuss Reich’s direct inspirations for the work and what spurred their friendship (both are Jewish and share the same love for romantic classical music). Unique connections like these help make conversations feel even more personal; it’s easy for the reader to feel physically in the room with the speakers (though this did make awkward moments a little more painful, there were a few with Greenwood!).

Two thirds through Conversations, dance choreographer Anne Keersmaeker introduces the term “cold school” to describe minimalism’s use of formal mechanics to reject the ego and intimate expression. Indeed, Reich makes it clear that a part of minimalism’s appeal for him is in the loss of the individual during performance. Music for 18 Musicians (1976) has performers set the tempo themselves and decide when to move through the piece in an intuitive way—like a chamber ensemble—allowing it to become a living composition that’s deeply in-touch with not only performers but also the audience. Making this composition bigger than one life (one performer) allows for the expression of ambient intimacy. Joy and passion that’s present around us every day but needs to be intensely focused on to reveal itself. In the development of mathematically precise compositions that are rigidly supported by fundamental beliefs on human expression, Reich’s works reject the term “cold school.”

There is nothing warmer than listening to a composition so entrancing it makes your head spin; the camaraderie in moving and listening as a practiced ensemble; a conversation shared with a close friend. Reich’s career is fueled by a passion for discovering and exploring humanist touchstones in uncanny places. Conversations is a well-worth salute to this ideal. L’Chaim!

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In Memory of Wayne Shorter

The enigmatic jazz titan passed away at 89 years in March 2023

The cover of Shorter’s youthful and sci-fi infused comic book, included with the purchase of his quartet’s final album Emanon

Wayne Shorter always talked in terms that were bigger than life. Everything was a lesson for Shorter, and he made everything a lesson for those around him. A practicing Buddhist, he described the tragic death of his late wife Ana Maria Patricio in a plane crash as an opportunity to learn to be happier. Shorter spoke of the same lesson after the passing of his daughter. Despite these and many other losses, Shorter’s outlook on life was of stark optimism. Friends and colleagues describe him as an uplifting soul, whose indirect yet poetically clear “Wayne-isms” were avenues of introspection. “You can’t rehearse the unknown,” Shorter famously replied after being simply asked what they were going to rehearse. Michelle Mercer—author of Shorter’s biography Footprints—asserts that Wayne chose to speak in this unconventional way because it’s truest to his imagination, to his mind, and to the Buddhist tradition. Whether it was in his virtuosic playing or his philosophical ruminations, his whole spirit bent towards this self-identifying truth. The forward-thinking musician passed away at the age of 89 in the city of angels.

Shorter was born in the industrial district of Newark, New Jersey in 1933. Growing up, his father worked as a welder while his mother was a seamstress. Wayne discovered his passion for the arts early on: both Wayne and his older brother Alan would consume comic books, science fiction stories, and music at extreme rates. Having picked up the clarinet at the age of 16, he encountered many teachers at the Newark Arts High School who helped to cultivate a passion for the performing arts. A year after the clarinet, he picked up the tenor saxophone in reaction to the bebop greats who were flourishing. Wasting no time, both Wayne and Alan formed a bebop combo with Wayne on tenor saxophone and Alan on trumpet. Respectively nicknamed “Doc Strange” and “Mr. Weird,” they quickly made a name for themselves–dressing in colorful, flamboyant outfits at their gigs. At the end of his high school career, bebop behemoth Sonny Sitt famously asked Wayne to join him on tour, to which Shorter declined instead pursuing studying composition at NYU. Even at a young age, Shorter’s spirit was inclined to the academic.

During his time at NYU, Wayne entrenched himself in bebop, turning heads in the New York scene. Following his graduation, Shorter joined the army, where he made the weekend 60-mile trip to NYC to gig, still managing to practice relentlessly. After two years in the army, Shorter was discharged and promptly recruited by both trumpet behemoth Maynard Ferguson (whose later rendition of Weather Report’s Birdland is just about as euphorically funky jazz can get) and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Making the unsurprising call, Shorter joined the Jazz Messengers in 1959, where he gained international acclaim through his virtuosic playing and compositional style. Children of the Night, one of Shorter’s earlier compositions with the Messengers, stands out with its prominent tenor-heavy melody that playfully dances around bop-infused chords.  

After four years with the Messengers, Shorter was poached again. Now joining the ranks of jazz nobility, Shorter was welcomed to Miles Davis’s Quintet, putting a stop in the revolving tenor saxophone seat. With the Second Great Quintet complete, the group’s sound and compositions, as Miles put it, was “time, no changes.” Though this style of free jazz fell under bop, it leaned on the more cosmic and avant-garde side of jazz.  Shorter’s first contribution to the Quintet was with the early 1965 E.S.P (Extra Sensory Perception), whose title track was one of his compositions. A frenetic track, the Quintet soars over Shorter’s disjointed chords, exploding and receding appropriately to let the soloists shine. Critical reception was high, with cultural critic Stanley Crouch’s infamous lens praising the album. Shorter later became the band’s primary composer.

Shorter stayed with the Quintet from 1964-1970 while he recorded his compositions for the Blue Note Records as well. In 1969 Shorter notably recorded In a Silent Way with Davis and Super Nova, his album, on the soprano saxophone. Shorter’s playing is nothing short of self-prescribed elusiveness, but with the soprano saxophone, his tenor’s dark timbre transforms into a brighter and more euphoric tone. This transformation of sound fit In a Silent Way’s electronic sonic soundscape beautifully. Grand pianos were replaced by electric pianos, and bright guitars entered the composition, creating a forward-thinking melding of rock and jazz. Its free-flowing sound and minimalist texture gave clear roots for the beginning of post-rock (which Talk Talk pocketed and revisited almost 18 years later). Music critic Lester Bangs wrote as much in his rave review for the album as well: “It is part of a transcendental new music which flushes categories away and, while using musical devices from all styles and cultures, is defined mainly by its deep emotion and unaffected originality.” Shorter’s intro solo on the title track is content with floating between space and time, letting the piano and guitar outline the composition’s formless structure.

Following 1970, Shorter helped form the jazz fusion band Weather Report as a response to the public’s growing desire for rock-influenced music. Helmed by keyboardist Joe Zawinul and Shorter initially, the band began as a free-improvising jazz group that freely incorporated elements of funk and R&B. Their first album Weather Report (1971) took what made In a Silent Way so enigmatic and ran with it. Redefining the boundary between rock and jazz, Weather Report pushed works at this intersection forward. In Shorter’s 15 years with the band, he acted as the primary instrumental voice and helped to compose many of the group’s genre bending tracks, from eclectic funk to smooth Latin jazz.

Shorter also continued to expand his own solo career. His worldly album Native Dancer (1975) liberally featured Herbie Hancock (the two of whom met playing in Davis’ Quintet) and blended Brazilian rhythms with jazz and funk’s freewheeling intensity. Shorter and Hancock’s friendship continued to flourish later in their careers with the creation of their Grammy winning 1+1 album in 1997. Both Wayne and Hancock were fervent Nichiren Buddhists which arguably helped enable them to channel their own spirituality through the music they were playing. The religion calls for the repeated chanting of the phrase Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, a commitment to nurturing Buddha inside of yourself.

Spiritually fitting, Shorter’s final musical group he piloted was one that prioritized exploring humanity over accessibility. The Wayne Shorter Quartet formed in 2000 with pianist Danilo Perez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade. Though the group made countless recordings (primarily of new and old Shorter compositions), one stands out in particular. Emanon is a monster project, giving the undertaker a small glimpse into Shorter’s “artistic multiverse.” A triple album, accompanied by an 84-paged graphic novel (developed by the futuristic loving Shorter), it truly puts Shorter’s spry spirit on full display. At the age of 85, nothing could stifle his enchanting musical outlook.

In his last years of life, Shorter returned to an opera he began designing at the age of 19. “Buddhism taught me that anything we promise to do, we must follow through with,” he declared when asked why it was that project he decided to pursue. The jazz opera, titled, Ipheigenia, tells the epic story of Greek figure who’s sacrificed to help mobilize an army for war. Working closely with Esperanza Spalding, a vocalist he played with in Weather Report, the two of them helmed the creation of this mammoth project. Fielding health crises after health crises, it was unclear whether Shorter would live to see the end of this project. Spalding worked full-time with Shorter to make the opera happen, and after eight years in the making it was complete. Not a culmination of Shorter’s work, but rather a continuation of his pursuit of impenetrable knowledge, the opera was at war with itself in its first performances. Both Shorter and Spalding described the work as being a “work in progress,” but perhaps it is fitting for Shorter’s immediate legacy to be that of a still-evolving performance. His pursuit of knowledge was so insatiable that even the turning of time couldn’t stop it.

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A Case for Reich and New York’s Minimalist Scene

Living minimalist legend Steve Reich recently premiered his new exuberant piece “Jacob’s Ladder” with the New York Philharmonic, proving that age has only sharpened his creative prowess

The celebrated composer and ensemble receiving a standing ovation for “Jacob’s Ladder”

What do Schubert and Beethoven have in common? Easy: they were both Viennese, alive at the same time, and marked the transition from Classical to Romantic music. Now, what does contemporary, minimalist composer Steve Reich have in common with them? It’s this question that the New York Philharmonic set out to answer in their 2023-24 Season Opening Concerts with the world premiere of Reich’s electrifying Jacob’s Ladder. Sandwiched between Beethoven’s Emperor Piano Concerto—featuring 8-time Grammy nominated Leif Ove Adnsnes as soloist—and Schubert’s Unfinished symphony, the programming seemed like an eclectic mix. But even with that being the case, it was an excellent showcase of minimalism now, where it’s headed, and how it squeezes inbetween the greats.

Despite the repertoire’s implications, a Steve Reich premier, surely, needs no introduction and has no trouble standing on its own. A Manhattan-based Cornell alum, Steve Reich pioneered minimalism in the New York downtown scene along with Philip Glass in the 1960s by using delicately constructed counterpoints and experimental techniques like audio phasing—looping multiple audio tapes together and letting them fall out of time from one another. These repeating phrases, slow harmonic rhythms, and abstract methods have now been met with universal acclaim but were originally so polarizing they caused a riot at Reich’s debut Carnegie Hall performance of his intentionally perturbing Four Organs. Ironically, it was exactly this uproar that launched Reich onto his pioneering path. Now flourishing, as the New York Times dubbed it, in his ‘late period,’ the 87-year-old Reich has arguably shaped the course of music history. His works span from sparse, delicate, rhythmic labyrinths to deeply contemplative religious melodies, typically host to Reichian pulsating 8th notes. It’s the latter style of his portfolio that Reich expands on for his new piece Jacob’s Ladder, which is also a revival of his signature style, as his latest work Traveler’s Prayer (2020) was marked by a medieval absence of that Reichian pulse.

Typical for Reich, Jacob’s Ladder is set against a Biblical verse, Genesis 28:12, which describes a dream Jacob has of a stairway that stretches from the earth to the heavens with angels of God ascending and descending on it. Also typical for Reich, the piece is scored for a small ensemble, with wind, string, and percussion performances from the NY Philharmonic and vocal deliveries from Synergy Vocals who’ve premiered three of Reich’s past pieces.

Jacob’s Ladder began with a quick and bright 16th note pulse from the viola, echoed by the vibraphone who played with the figure as the flute and strings dotted and arpeggiated a portrait of the bright stepwise imagery Reich conjured. As the cellos and violin suspended the piece with warmth, coolly delivered arpeggios from the vibraphone, strings, and flute launched it into a new chord, bouncing the pulse between string instruments and landing it in the vibraphone yet again. The tenor voice then brushed into the stoic amber color that the clarinet and vibraphone evoked to deliver the piece’s first wordless lines. “Va yachalohm”—and he dreamed.

Unlike its predecessors, Jacob’s Ladder doesn’t rely on voices to generate melodic texture. Rather, Reich composed with the “notes as messengers,” where the meaning of these messengers is slightly ambiguous (the Hebrew word also means angels, according to program notes). Reich’s first foray into this religiously propelled style of music with Tehillim was a grand interweaving of vocal and rhythmic counterpoints set against inconsistent time signatures. Because of this, Jacob’s Ladder is much lighter, instrumental, and sparse than one might expect. This is to its benefit: it’s easily likeable, partially because of its lack of gravitas.

It does have its pronounced moments though. Tenor and soprano entrances were invitingly ethereal, with those at the halfway point of the piece lifting the entire ensemble up to new figurative and literal heights. In the third part of the piece, deep piano and celli lines perforated the mix as the rest of the ensemble climbed upwards. As the piece ended, however, the vibraphone’s pulse slowed to half of its original speed; the stairway sounded almost out of reach at this point, as a series of descending arpeggios were repeated. The ensemble finally landed on the crown of the chord and held it, immobilized. You could feel the imagery Reich was unfolding in the room. It was all-encompassing, a master at work. To that point, conductor Jaap van Zweden contributed deeply to this palpable imagery. Sharp shoulder-raises conjured clouds paired with soaring clarinet entrances, while sweeping panoramic gestures italicized the piano’s gripping pedal tones, matching an angel’s assured descent down Jacob’s ladder. 20 minutes felt like 20 seconds. Reich’s touch has lost none of its charm, even in the face of minimalism’s, at times, intentionally monotonous character. Jacob’s Ladder was enchantingly fresh.

Though the rest of the program wasn’t quite as forward-thinking as Jacob’s Ladder, Adnsnes’ performance of Emperor was surprisingly delicate. Piano runs in the first movement were delicately smooth and elevated by the orchestra’s intensely supportive pianos. They blended with such intensity I was genuinely shocked—maybe it’s the amateur in me speaking, but I sincerely haven’t heard an orchestra play with such deliberate listening live. Emperor ended with a roaring applause from the audience, to which Adnsnes left them with a short but gorgeously meditative encore that echoed in my mind for hours.

The New York Philharmonic continued to deliver with Unfinished. Horn lines bounced out of the orchestra with unmistakable tension, which were appropriately reeled back in by Zweden who took his time crafting a cathartic sound. Trumpet lines were supportive and blended beautifully, contributing to the warm and deeply brooding sound Unfinished lends itself to. Despite this, the trumpet player in me thirsted to hear the brass section led by the trumpets rather than the horns. Though some of this desire was quenched by the trumpet’s bright and emphatic forte with the timpani at the height of the first movement, I was left wanting more particularly in the second movement.

After the concert I was lucky enough to run into 2nd bassoonist Roger Nye who, when asked, eagerly stated that he loved minimalism and that Reich’s new piece was no exception. I would argue that the average classically oriented New Yorker would answer similarly, especially considering that minimalism is one of the few meaningful forms of classical music to emerge from New York’s downtown scene. As a cultural hub for this niche genre, perhaps the theme of the concert wasn’t to simply compare Reich’s work to the greats. Rather, it was to celebrate New York’s role in fostering this unique musical tradition alongside Vienna’s.

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A Portrait of the Producer: Vegyn

The illustrious British producer’s latest releases highlight their creative streak, with a diverse array of electronica

The surrealist cover of Vegyn and Francis Hornsby’s new spoken-word album

“When the hell is Frank Ocean releasing a new album?” I don’t know, but Vegyn might. The 31-year-old UK-based glitch-hop and prog-house extraordinaire, best known for producing Frank Ocean’s Endless and Blonde, has been steadily pumping out projects over the past four years. Now having made his own label, 3 albums, 3 EPs, and 2 mixtapes—with one a staggering two-and-a-half-hours long—it’s safe to say that Vegyn’s taken Frank Ocean’s silence as a message to double down on his sound. Admirably, Vegyn isn’t simply copying the same production formula across all these projects. Ranging from ambient house-thumping ragers to his own disconcertingly minimal (yet melodic) take on intelligent dance music, Vegyn’s unabashedly pushes his songwriting in new directions. In the last two months alone, he’s ricocheted between avant-garde poetry to prog-house with surprising dexterity.

The Head Hurts but the Heart Knows the Truth—the aforementioned ‘avant-garde poetry’ album—is perhaps the biggest change in sound Vegyn’s made to date. The trip-hop-driven album unleashes a hurricane of melancholically booming synths yet is calmly centered around the narrator’s psychosis-propelled spoken-word poetry. The stream-of-consciousness lyrics, written by Francis Hornsby and delivered by AI, revolve around sardonic stories about the narrator’s past lives, detailing their thoughts on music, love, spring onions, and everything in between. “I used to take my breakfast off of a mirror / Now I just walk around and stare at people at the park” are the unwelcoming first two lines in the project. The surrealistic implications of ‘staring’ juxtapose the familiarity of simply people watching. It’s clear the narrator is unwell.

The album also marks Vegyn’s departure from minimalistic-glitch-hop-inspired beats, though he makes his ambient influences clear: “Truisms 4 Dummies” and “Bucket Listener” are Boards of Canada worship, with synth and guitar lines that ground the listener with the weight of emotional memory. This style of instrumentation lends itself perfectly to a spoken-word album. Cathartic strings and synths dot (and at times swallow) the instrumentation of “Business Opportunities,” giving the AI’s emotionless voice faux depth. Hornsby expertly weaves between stories of drug abuse and lost love in this track as well, making it easy to get lost in the narrator’s musings. “I felt happy in a secret way / Naked obviously, / Angry that I could hear voices / But really, / I was at peace with everything.” Some lines cut through the mix and demand the listener’s attention, like a stopped clock being right three times a day.

While Vegyn does demonstrate he’s able to produce a compelling album in this style, the narrator’s storytelling can be too cryptic at times, giving the album moments of embarrassing bathos. “Of all the onions in the world / I prefer spring onions,” the narrator interjects in “Truisms 4 Dummies,” right after discussing how life makes them feel “both dead and alive.” Contrary to its purpose, these intrusive comments don’t highlight the narrator’s deteriorating mental condition, they instead clumsily show that Vegyn has yet to find his footing in this sub-genre of trip-hop. Despite its kitschy attributes, there’s a lot to love about Head; it explores a style of electronica rarely indulged in. Forgoing his pattern of musical reinvention, I hope Vegyn returns to the album to smooth out its rough edges.

Less than two months after Head’s release, Vegyn’s new single “Makeshift Tourniquet” made for a particularly surprising listen given its lack of experimentation. It begins with spacey house-inspired synths pulsating in and out over a sample of a man discussing “the creative process.” His words are masked by the flow of synths, only discernible when they ebb back. As the synth’s reverb starts spiraling out of control, the song plunges the listener into the depths of a frigid and sparsely populated underground electronic venue; a crispy drum loop replaces the ethereal echoes which are now just a backdrop to the song’s new head snapping anthem. Where a lesser artist would have let the synths engulf the mix in a saccharine chant, Vegyn’s subversion of the dance formula forces listeners to perk their ears and focus on the production’s minute changes. 

Despite not seeking to redefine genres like Vegyn’s other works, “Makeshift Tourniquet” is an incredibly gripping track which sits right in the middle of prog-house’s oft-explored motifs–apart from its surprisingly minimalist drop. This, to me, is a welcome change. Partially as the result of his reinvention, Vegyn oftentimes struggles with developing depth to some tracks. Head’s small bumps in production and layout are clear growing pains from Vegyn’s introduction to the spoken-word sub-genre. Some sections of his other albums (Only Diamonds Cut Diamonds) are also so minimal, I can’t help but wonder if there’s supposed to be more to the mix. Sometimes reinvention is unnecessary. For Vegyn’s next release, let’s hope he continues his foray onto already-established sound.

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Making Sense of “Stop Making Sense”

The Talking Heads’ acclaimed concert film just re-released this month, losing none of its strange jubilance.

Byrne waltzes with a lamp to the bridge of “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody).”

Popping off the screen, swaying to the Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” music video, David Byrne washed over my high school biology teacher’s monitor. A new wave connoisseur, my teacher wanted to educate us on her generation’s hits. Propelled by an ambient piano sequence, Byrne’s wild interpretative dance was enough to make even the most energetic of highschoolers cross-eyed; with its odd visuals and erratic time-signatures the video felt oddly poetic but was impossible to decipher. Despite its entirely inoffensive nature, I felt annoyed. Is there value in art being intentionally cryptic?

Now over 30 years after its dissolution, the Talking Heads is being ‘revived’ with A24’s 4K remaster of their concert film Stop Making Sense. Sense takes two of the group’s enigmatic live performances and stitches them together, culminating in a showing featuring 16 of their most popular songs.  The film–which re-released on September 11th–originally received overwhelmingly positive reception: the audience treated it like a concert and would frequently dance in the aisles of the theater. Stylistically, Jonathan Demme’s directing departs from similar documentaries. Where the Buena Vista Social Club took an intimate look at the historical context of their band, Sense instead focuses on the mannerisms and stage presence of the performers, intentionally excluding any critical discussion. Perhaps this is fitting. Sense began as a passion project to immerse the viewers in a Heads live performance.

With no exposition, the film opens with Byrne walking alone onto a barren stage donning a beat-down gray blazer. He sets a boom-box on the ground and promptly plays a stripped-down acoustic version of “Psycho Killer.” His head clucks like a chicken to the rhythm while his face appears painfully mute with emotion as he sings. Normally marked by a euphoric guitar solo, the ending sequence is replaced with an electronic drum kit that sounds like a 14-year-old’s shoddy first attempts at producing. Byrne contorts his body in euphoria (or is it pain?) to the stricken beat—his frozen face makes it impossible to tell. Though the Heads don’t announce their doctrine, they do so subtly through the songs they perform: “Heaven is a place where nothing happens,” Byrne croons.

After each song finishes, new band members trickle in along with stage crew who physically build the band up, culminating in a performance of “Girlfriend is Better.” The punching bassline takes over Byrne’s body as he sings with a nervous vibrato, his vocals seraphically echoed by the back-up singers. Now donning a smile and his infamous ‘big suit,’ Byrne shuffles with his hands in his pockets, only appearing in control of his body when he grabs the microphone. Ending the film, the band leans-back into “Crosseyed and Painless;” the groove is so deep-in-the-pocket you can almost hear it hit the bottom. Even just watching the film at my desk, I can’t help but get up and dance (much to my girlfriend’s amusement).

Sense takes the alien rhythms and visuals that made “Once in a Lifetime’s” music video so disconcerting and makes them seem tame. No longer a cross-eyed and painless high schooler, I’m now able to better appreciate the band’s commitment to their cryptic ethos. In the current age of rock where a check is prioritized over individuality, Sense serves as a reminder of the timeless pleasures of ‘senselessness.’

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Minimalism and the Religious Experience

Half-hurriedly walking through the halls of my dorm, flicking through Spotify, I rest my thumb on Steve Reich’s Tehillim. ‘Literally translated, Tehillim means praises in Hebrew’ Reich writes in the composer notes; traditionally, it translates to Psalms. As I strike play on the first movement, Reich’s ecstatic cantillations bless my weary agnostic ears. The soprano sits on top of the minimalist mix, cyclically singing Psalms 19:2-5. Below her rests the percussionists who play two delicately syncopated drumming sequences, one being clapped and the other precisely played on a tom drum. The elaborately asymmetrical patterns interweave and dance around each other as I enter my room and set down my backpack. As I find my own place in the ebb and flow of Tehillim, Reich throws a curveball. On the and-of-one the clarinet and cello enter playing the root with a rich and grounded square-wave-like tone; it’s impossible for this entrance to not bypass your brain entirely and grab hold of your feet. I drum my heel to the chunks of syncopated rhythm I’m able to hold onto before they slip away. The third movement begins. Gently caressed by the vibraphone, it intimately opens itself, briefly travelling into a meditative minor key before resolving. Though Tehillim doesn’t quite reach the atmospheric heights that Music for 18 Musicians does, that isn’t what it sets out to do.  Rather, it takes a deliberately melodic approach in its exploration of Reich’s relationship with Judaism.

As the fourth movement begins, the steadily syncopated drumming patterns nervously pick up in speed, almost like they’re suffering. But this nervousness morphs into a grandiose sound as the piece ends in an all-consuming drone. With the soprano’s voice still echoing in my head I lay down in my bed. Is faith a way to find joy? I think Reich has found a way to prove it does.