Music For 18 Musicians
by Steve Reich

One of my wife's favourite albums. It really is an astonishing album.

Not an album for the casual listener but if you allow yourself to REALLY listen to it, it delivers in spades. A masterpiece of it's type, very minimalist, and a great listen if you give it the attention it deserves.

This is a brilliant composition of music that is amazing at creating so many images and stories in your mind. The performances on some of the instruments as well are brilliant and so emotional at times that it makes it so easy to connect to the music. It also gives us a very rich and grand experience and allows you to explore so much in the sound and discover the nuances that are all over this record. It is the perfect album to put on, switch off the lights and get comfortable in a warm chair and just enjoy the journey you are taken on. However, it can feel a little slow at times and could be shortened a little. Also, some of the sections are a little weaker than others. Overall, a very important album that always delivers a great experience and fantastic musical quality that would be even better live.

From StefanR10 10/29/2020 16:22 | #259913

Very interesting music it is like a color game it repeats and then comes out in a completely new way. You can feel the tension is rising until the end of the album. Very good new classical music. Glad to have heard it.

From JulianR 11/23/2017 00:51 | #201917

Loving the ECM version that just came out too

From ForegroundNoise 11/07/2017 14:00 | #200914

Despite being divided into multiple 'sections', Reich's minimalist masterpiece is performed in one take, and so has the curious property of being seemingly immobile and yet constantly washing over you. Listening to the strings undercut the vocals on Section VII has a desperate urgency that is difficult to put into words. Reich's music somehow makes you feel you've heard this a million lifetimes before and will hear it a million lifetimes over again all without uttering a single lyric.

Most of this is copied from the description of the album in my overall chart, do check it out if you have the time!!

From JulianR 10/24/2017 03:02 | #200000

It might technically be called classical music, but being a person coming from a rock-oriented background, it seems a lot more like ambient electronic than anything else. It seems like something Brian Eno could have made. It barely even sounds like it was made with acoustic instruments (at least the version I have).

From ForegroundNoise 09/26/2017 09:33 | #198764

On 'Music...', Reich modernises classical music for the 20th century, creating a piece that seems both to move so slowly and yet take your breath away.

From corenfro 04/22/2017 03:37 | #189659

Nuanced and expansive. Similar to, but not as varied as Philip Glass's glassworks. The concepts overstay their welcome slightly. The whole thing could have been half as long and still had the same effect on me. Must be very impressive to see performed live.

From Gooz 09/22/2014 12:00 | #122400

Very stunning. Nice to get a trip. Sober is pretty repetitive could be shorter.

"Minimalism" seems to be an unfortunate term to describe a piece of music, where so much is going on. The only gripe I have with this is that it could be easily cut by about 5-10 mins. Not that it isn't great throughout, but the ideas are the same, so I think the perfect length for this would be 45-50 minutes. But that's really a minor complaint.