I’m Just Not Sure What I Think About This Music — And That’s A Good Thing

Terry Riley is a keyboard player from a Californian town near San Francisco. That’s a very brief summary. To expand a little for those of us not familiar with the music of Riley we can add the following touch points:

organ, delay, experimental, minimalist, glass, reich, rainbow in curved air, in c, raga, indian, jazz, kronos quartet, loops, drones, tapes, cage

…and here is the music-map:

Of most interest in this blog here would be Fennesz and Can. However from what I know of Riley and the others listed I would go as far as saying Riley’s music is unique as it doesn’t sound much like either of these two, or anyone else in the map (if I had to hang my hat somewhere it would be on the Philip Glass hook). Oddly another record I’m thinking about is Steve Hillage’s Rainbow Dome Musick and I don’t think that is just because of the “rainbow” name…

…A Rainbow In Curved Air being the album Terry Riley is most famous for. Released in 1969 the record became influential to a series of solo artists like Mike Oldfield and Steve Reich plus bands like Soft Machine and even The Who who paid homage in their track Baba O’Riley.

The question is, does one need to hear anything else apart from A Rainbow… [and maybe In C too? Ed.] or does that album cover everything you need to know about Terry Riley? As Riley is still going it would be a shame to conclude that a career spanning over 30 studio albums could be summed up in just one or two releases? I must admit I’m not best placed to answer such a question having not studied Riley before and not even (yet) owning a copy of the Riley anchor point: A Rainbow…

Despite these personal shortcomings I will assess the current exhibit Shri Camel both on it’s own merits and then with reference to a stream of A Rainbow…

On It’s Own Merits?

First a warning.

Riley’s music is not easy listening. His use of quick repetitive atonal patterns on traditional organs can sound quite harsh and jarring. The edges aren’t smoothed off with beautiful lush Enoesque string chords. There is also a lot of (apparent) improvisation so the music relies little upon hypnotic loops and rhythms. Consequently you have to delve quite deeply to hook into any sense of “groove”.

Next the facts.

The album is divided into four tracks:

Anthem of the Trinity — 9:25
Celestial Valley — 11:32
Across the Lake of the Ancient World — 7:26
Desert of Ice — 15:13

The tracks were recorded, and various versions performed live, over a couple of years, with the actual album release appearing in 1978.

ps. It has a beautiful album cover — an illustration by Bernard & Barbara Xolotl.

Feelings?

Whereas Riley started out in the early ’60s as one of the pioneering American minimalist composers (In C was scored for an indeterminate number of performers playing randomly sequenced loops for an indeterminate overall duration) Shri Camel is far from minimalism.

It’s more virtuoso keyboard playing, much of it apparently improvised and seemingly random…

I’m not a person who sits down with paper and pencil to do my music.

… but give it time and let your mind make a connection and you’ll start to pick up the patterns.

For that reason I really think this album requires a multiple of listens. It took me about 5 plays before I started to gain a foothold. Then I began to recognise the loops and grooves. Like digging for treasure the sense of satisfaction is enhanced once you begin to scratch beneath the surface and actually hit the gold. How far do you want to dig? I’m sure another 5 or 10 plays would reveal further buried treasure deep in the grooves of this record. How long have you got?

Satisfaction is enhanced once you begin to scratch beneath the surface and actually hit the gold.

Each piece here follows a very similar pattern of melodies over a repetitive rising scale. To such an extent they are quite difficult to distinguish. It may be my imagination, or the effect of becoming more atuned as you progress, but I felt like each subsequent piece had the underlying organ bass groove higher in the mix lending a tangible physical and psychological momentum to the album overall.

Well, that’s about it really. It’s not an easy review this one and I don’t really know what else I can say about this music. Ending on a positive characteristic, which I’ve attributed to some other music, but not often, I can say Riley’s music is highly original and does strange things to your brain. It is hard to listen to such music without experiencing some sort of shift in consciousness, and Shri Camel exhibits this characteristic manfully. Thus, although the album does leave me somewhat confused, this is high praise indeed.

In Comparison To A Rainbow In Curved Air?

The facts.

Rainbow In Curved Air was Riley’s third album, released in 1969.

It has two side long tracks:

A Rainbow in Curved Air — 18:39
Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band — 21:38

Feelings?

Well, the first thing to say is it is different to Shri Camel, so my implied hypotheses that Riley’s music sounds the same falls at the first hurdle. Sure the instrumentation is similar but the actual compositions are significantly different. Indeed both tracks within the album are different to each other. The title track has a hypnotic pulse / the second track is slower and more ambient based around a deep drone.

The title track begins with a circular keyboard loop similar to the sequencer pulses of mid ’70s Tangerine Dream albeit played on a vintage electric organ. This segues into a brief gentler middle section, followed by a rhythmic second half underpinned by tabla.

Second track Poppy Nogood… begins with a distorted looped drone that gradually builds in volume. Much more traditionally minimalist the music is yet jazzy with brassy (clarinet/trumpet/sax) overtones which sound a bit like Miles Davis’s fusion work; further Moorish pipe overlays lend the piece an ethnic Middle Eastern or Indian flavour. I like side two more than its famous counterpart. Interestingly for such long drawn out tracks they both end suddenly — jolting one out of one’s cosmic reverie.

It is easy to hear and understand why A Rainbow In Curved Air became such a revered classic of the genre. Shri Camel coming 9 years later, albeit another excellent and different release, is less groundbreaking almost by definition. I would also say it is harder to get in to for the uninitiated.

Would you have both? It depends. Start with A Rainbow… , give it half a dozen plays, and if the unique sounds are beginning to nestle nicely in your brain matter then definitely grab a copy of Shri Camel too (In C must wait for a future time).