Jamming Under the Influence of a Steve Reich Box Set

This stuff was all recorded in the latter half of April in my trailer at Cannings Court Farm. Jim on concertina, Joel on hurdy-gurdy, me on saz. The Steve Reich influence is audible in a few places, although as it's all improvisation, there's nothing like the harmonic complexity (or precision). Lots of repetition though! Jim's GCSE music teacher at school had performed as part of an ensemble playing a debut of a Reich composition some years earlier, so she introduced him (and Mike, also of Red Dog Green Dog, a classmate in Liverpool) to Reich's work. Mike switched Joel onto it quite recently, and Joel lent me the retrospective box set Phases when I arrived. I knew Different Trains, having heard the Kronos Quartet debut it on Radio 3 in 1989, but not much else. Music for 18 Musicians has been a near continuous soundtrack to my time at the farm.


Steve Reich at 70 - photo by Jeffrey Herman
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And Mike's heard that the Edinburgh/Marseille-based Scottish/French MC Ghostown has made a beat out of one of the tracks on the Red Dog Green Dog album. We haven't heard it yet, but I've been in touch. Oh, and their track "Dave" (from the same album) got played on Radio 3's "Late Junction" recently, too.