In the 1960s, something happened to classical music. A bold new American voice emerged, pushing away the intricate, atonal forms of the European avant-garde and drawing on the music that most people were actually listening to. The scene led to composers having bona fide hits (Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians), and aiming to do so: Philip Glass’s album ‘Glassworks’, which featured Façades, was created with the chief aim of appealing to a much wider audience. Glass added lyricism, power and brooding emotion to the minimalist sound, though he prefers to call his work ‘repetitive structures.’ You can trace a line from the pulsating, stripped-down sounds of Reich, Glass and Adams to the clarity and repetition of Kraftwerk, and on through just about every type of electronic music you could ever dance to. This limited-edition LP celebrates the state of minimalism 50 years after the movement broke down barriers in classical music.
