Steve Reich

Featuring: Philip Glass, Jon Gibson

condition (record/cover): NM / NM

Gatefold sleeve.

The first commercially released recording of Reich's music with live musicians. Side A is Four Organs (1970): four Farfisa electric organs (Reich, Philip Glass, Art Murphy, Steve Chambers) striking a single dominant eleventh chord and gradually augmenting individual notes against Jon Gibson's steady eighth-note maracas pulse. The piece extends a single sonority across roughly twenty minutes ("slow-motion music," in Reich's phrase), and famously provoked the Carnegie Hall riot of 18 January 1973 when Michael Tilson Thomas programmed it on a Boston Symphony bill.

Side B is Phase Patterns (1970): four organs without maracas, drumming-derived rhythm patterns gradually phasing out of unison. Released by Chantal Darcy's Paris imprint Shandar, the same label that issued Glass's Solo Music and Riley's Persian Surgery Dervishes. Reich does not use electric instruments often, which makes the Farfisa colour of this LP unique in his catalogue.