Brian Eno on Steve Reich:
I was interested in the experimental ideas of Cornelius Cardew, John Cage and Gavin Bryars, but also in pop music. Pop was all about the results and the feedback. The experimental side was interested in process more than the actual result – the results just happened and there was often very little control over them, and very little feedback.
Take Steve Reich. He was an important composer for me with his early tape pieces and his way of having musicians play a piece each at different speeds so that they slipped out of synch.
But then when he comes to record a piece of his like, say, Drumming, he uses orchestral drums stiffly played and badly recorded. He’s learnt nothing from the history of recorded music. Why not look at what the pop world is doing with recording, which is making incredible sounds with great musicians who really feel what they play.
It’s because in Reich’s world there was no real feedback. What was interesting to them in that world was merely the diagram of the piece, the music merely existed as an indicator of a type of process.
via The Guardian
I attended a live performance of Drumming in Montreal in the mid 1970's and got to spend some time with his band since some of them crashed at a friend's apartment.
Eno's observation that the drums where played stiffly is inaccurate. In particular Russell Hartenberger and Bob Becker where extraordinary loose and present. They where able to achieve through virtuosity and intense listening the rhythmic phase effects that the electronic crowd (thats me, over there in the back of the crowd) get by knob twiddling.
That performance is one of the high points of my musical life. Sorry, I like a lot of Eno's work but he is mistake if he thinks pops musicians really feel what they play more than the original performance group that toured drumming.
I attended a live performance of Drumming in Montreal in the mid 1970's and got to spend some time with his band since some of them crashed at a friend's apartment.
Eno's observation that the drums where played stiffly is inaccurate. In particular Russell Hartenberger and Bob Becker where extraordinary loose and present. They where able to achieve through virtuosity and intense listening the rhythmic phase effects that the electronic crowd (thats me, over there in the back of the crowd) get by knob twiddling.
That performance is one of the high points of my musical life. Sorry, I like a lot of Eno's work but he is mistake if he thinks pops musicians really feel what they play more than the original performance group that toured drumming.
I attended a live performance of Drumming in Montreal in the mid 1970's and got to spend some time with his band since some of them crashed at a friend's apartment.
Eno's observation that the drums where played stiffly is inaccurate. In particular Russell Hartenberger and Bob Becker where extraordinary loose and present. They where able to achieve through virtuosity and intense listening the rhythmic phase effects that the electronic crowd (thats me, over there in the back of the crowd) get by knob twiddling.
That performance is one of the high points of my musical life. Sorry, I like a lot of Eno's work but he is mistake if he thinks pops musicians really feel what they play more than the original performance group that toured drumming.
Agreed, Looseion. Eno is, in my opinion, a genius, but he is a genius several tiers below the genius of Reich.