The choice of Steve Reich's minimal drumming piece reflects my current state of over-saturation with conventional music. As with 1982's On Land I picked the most experimental release from the poll. The one which comes closest to sound and is furthest away from traditional harmonic and melodic music.

There are only beats here. 85 minutes split in four parts. First we have bongos, then we have marimbas, then glockenspiels and in the last part all three of them together. There is a natural rhythm vibe which is totally hypnotic. The slow gradual shifts of speed and metre keep the attention of the listener.

Steve Reich (born 1936) composed his longest work in 1971 shortly after his trip to Africa where he studied the drum patterns of the Ewe tribe from Ghana (Writings on Music, 1965-2000, page 55ff.). He especially concentrated on the Gahu dance, a very popular dance which is not restricted to a special time or place. The music and the dance to it have the same name and can't be separated.

This is a world music composition which covers Africa with the bongos, South America with the marimbas and East Asia with the glockenspiel emulating the gamelan. There is a progression from the hardest most physical beats by the bongos which often sound like patter of horses hooves to the wooden sounding marimbas and finally to the higher metallic sounds of the glockenspiel. Reich calls them timbres. A movement from the body to the spirit. Additionally Reich uses voices in the marimba part and whistling plus piccolo flutes in the glockenspiel part to imitate the drum sounds.

I think this is one of the rare occasions in music where a highly original idea (minimal evolution) is realised in a perfectly compelling way. Especially when I think of the minimal music I know which always was more fascinating in theory than in practice (see Phil Glass's symphonic overkill, Michael Nyman's sugary melodies or Brian Eno's dull(!?) tape echo-delay experiment Discreet Music). A reason why this succeeds could be that Reich only focusses on rhythm, a basic component of music. There is an accordance of minimal movement and use of minimal, monochromatic instruments.

The end of the composition comes as a shock. It is as if life ends. The heart beat of the universe stops. We are left with silence again. And I can maybe listen to some more normal music with tunes and stuff again.

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part XX was this post. I am half through. Ouff.

The Go-Betweens perform their new single Here Comes a City in the studio.

Simple, energetic and absolutely lovely. Some great transcendental guitar solo by Grant McLennan in the second half. Robert Forster is hilarious as always. What an original. Amazing that they can still pull it off after all those years. I am very much looking forward to the new album and the concert end of May.

Alan Moore, the comics author recently interviewed Brian Eno on BBC 4's chain reaction (28 minutes, >30 megs). How I love to listen to Brian Eno's clear way of thinking. Brian Eno is the Johann Sebastian Bach of our times. Via totally fuzzy.

P.S. Eno has finished a new album with songs. The first one for more than 25 years. Let's hope that it will be released soon.

The contenders 1983 has been the most difficult year for me to choose a favourite from yet. At the time I did my military service and wasn't listening to anything featured in the poll. One reason was that I didn't have the cash to buy music. In the discotheques they played one song over and over: Nena's Neue Deutsche Welle smash hit 99 Luftballons. There have been a couple of good albums which I purchased later though but none was really outstanding. R.E.M.'s first sound longplay Murmur established a new voice in American alternative folk-rock but lacks in the urgency department. The Durutti Column released the new agey Another Setting, probably their most consistent album which is a little too much on the easy-listening side for me though. I also listened to some albums I forgot in the poll like Police's swan song Synchronicity which again is probably their best but still too hackneyed as the whole band. Brian Eno's airspace ambient Apollo was okay too but didn't grip me at all. Finally I realised that Yoko Ono's and John Lennon's posthumous album Milk and Honey was released in January 1984 and therefore per se excluded.

The cover The first thing striking about the Meat Puppets second effort is the colourful cover art. It has been made by the band and it reveals that they were on a special trip when recording the album. I see a red buffalo on a green pasture with the blue night sky around. The Meat Puppets hail from Tempe near Phoenix, Arizona. Already with the cover they allude to three aspects which give an idea of their music. Animalistic force, rural America and psychedelic consciousness.

The music Genre wise it has been described as cowpunk. The seemingly absurd fusion of punk rock with American roots music like country and bluegrass. Later on there have been other bands exploiting this fascinating approach further like e.g. Camper Van Beethoven but they never achieved the same degree of originality and innocence as the Meat Puppets, how could they? There is an immediate amateur lo-fi feeling to their music which really is in the spirit of do it yourself punk. When they play countryish tunes they can play them really fast (Magic Toy Missing). Like on speed, or ecstasy. They are also the masters of the slow intense sparkling two minutes ballad. No time wasted. Twelve songs. 30 minutes. Listen to the guitar instrumental Aurora Borealis, the polar light phenomenon as seen from the Arizona desert and judge for yourself.

I tried neither to mention Nirvana's Unplugged to which they contributed the most harrowing three songs (from II) nor Cris Kirkwood's (the bassist and brother of the singer/guitarist) drug addiction with some grave recent consequences here but I didn't quite succeed.

The 7 bonus tracks on the re-release shouldn't be forgotten as they are worth it for once. They only add a little more than 18 minutes which is good as well.

Here is the overview of the series 40 years, 40 albums of which part XIX was this post.

I reposted my review of the first Roxy Music album which started the 40 albums series on ILM. Sometimes I think I should give up this blog and ask questions on ILM instead. It is so much more fun...

The new New Order is absolutely amazing. For a band of old farts at least. It'll come out in spring time. That fits quite well.

Audiofile (see last post) offers the 85 seconds of Every work of art is an uncommitted crime (see second last post). I am not sure if Adorno would have approved of this. He wouldn't have dismissed it as evil popular music, that's for sure though.

I am probably the last one to find out. Salon has started a daily mp3 blog almost two weeks ago. It is called Audiofile and it features a wide variety of styles. Classical, experimental, jazz, blues, indie-rock etc. Of course you have to watch that ad clip to get the daypass but it is definitely worth it if you are interested in discovering some exciting new music. The writer of the column is Thomas Bartlett who also runs a blog named doveman after his band. I just listened to Pissing from the new Low album. It combines nicely the calm and noisy sides of the band.