Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians

This record is a companion for Philip Glass's Music in Twelve Parts — these being the first two minimalist albums I bought, around the same time in early 1984. This one definitely was from Our Price on Bridge Street, as it still has the £5.99 Our Price label.

It's very hard to remember what my ears thought when they first heard this music, which now seems so familiar, both in its own right and through the many other pieces that it has inspired. (And it remains so much better than the KLF and The Orb, to mention two recent examples.)

I do remember that a few months later, in August '84, I stumbled across a short display on contemporary American composition in a museum in Hamburg. I read Reich's essay Music as a Gradual Process behind the glass, and probably took notes. That's how important it seemed to me at the time. And I think I was right.

I love the way the music can change under your feet without you noticing it. I was listening to Side 2 and realised that a shaker had crept in. I remember watching the performance of (I think it was) Four Organs at this concert 18 months ago, and one guy had to shake the shaker with a metronome beat for about ten minutes: I imagine it being incredibly difficult to do something so simple for so long. Anyway, I was determined that I would fix this shaker-on-Side-2 and not let it out of my 'sight' so that I would know exactly when it disappeared again. But, as usual, I failed: mind wandered, and by the time I remembered what I was supposed to be doing, the shaker had gone.

They've just recently brought out a new recording of this composition. I've listened to half of the new one on Last.fm. I couldn't immediately spot the differences, I have to say. I was listening to Rob Cowan pick his way through multiple versions of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring on Saturday, and I look forward to the day when Radio 3 gives Reich recordings the same treatment.

I used to have a cassette version of this, as well. I kept it in the car, and I guess it met the same end as the car: compressed into scrap after our crash in 2006.

Now, should I go and see this piece performed live next month?

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