eMusic Review 0
In classical music circles, Terry Riley's insistent, repeating collection of fragments known as In C changed everything. That 1964 piece is generally acknowledged as the work that unleashed the musical movement known as Minimalism. But in the rock world, Riley became famous for his keyboard improvisations, often done with early looping and delay technology. (The Who's "Baba O'Riley," often incorrectly referred to as "Teenage Wasteland," was named after Terry Riley and uses a keyboard sound clearly based on his works.)
This recording, originally released in the early 1980s, is a live performance on two Prophet V synthesizers — hence the title Songs for the Ten Voices of the Two Prophets. By this point, Riley had been studying, and teaching, Indian raga singing for almost a decade, and in addition to creating shifting tapestries of electronic keyboards, he sings in the style of his teacher, the late Pandit Pran Nath. The texts, also by Riley, are simple — one is tempted to say Minimalist — and are in English; but the tuning and the ornamentation is right out of the raga singer's playbook.
The longest and most effective of these pieces is "Embroidery." Using the Prophet V's ability to warp and bend… read more »
