It’s good to be back, having taken a month off to partake in February Album Writing Month. I’m looking forward to continuing to move through the years.

So, 1978, the year that Jim Jones’ cult followers committed mass suicide in Jonestown, the Panama canal treaty was signed agreeing to give possession of the canal to Panama by the year 2000, Sony introduced the first Walkman, and the first transatlantic balloon flight was made.

As for music, the following are rated as the top five albums of 1978 according to our lovely rateyourmusic.com users.

#1 Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians
#2 Kraftwerk - Die Mensch-Maschine
#3 Wire - Chairs Missing
#4 Sun Ra - Lanquidity
#5 Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town

We’ve got our first entries from Steve Reich and Sun Ra, and three returning artists. I’m also throwing this lot into the mixer from further down the list:

#7 Rush - Hemispheres
#8 Elvis Costello - Next Year’s Model
#9 Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food
#18 Kate Bush - The Kick Inside
#19 Blondie - Parallel Lines
#25 Brian Eno - Ambient 1: Music for Airports
#62 Rolling Stones - Some Girls

Let’s see which of these 12 heavyweights comes out on top in probably our tightest contest yet.

Die Mensch Maschine (The Man Machine in English) is the seventh album by the German electronic band. As stated on Wikipedia, ‘it sees them moving to more danceable rhythms and less minimalistic arrangements’.

The album kicks off with Die Roboter (The Robots), the album’s first single. “We’re charging our batteries / and now we’re full of power” the song repeats, along with very few other lines, creating a slightly sinister, industrial feel. The track is repetitive and features the usual simple synth melodies following the almost spoken word vocals. What’s particularly notable is how the synthesised bass pounds in a way that I’ve not experienced from anything electronic up to this point. It’s a good indication of what’s to come.

I prefer the tracks that don’t rely as heavily on the slightly cheesy sounding synth melodies present on the first track, and that create more interesting soundscapes. Spacelabs is such an example, where the synths combine with electronic drums to create something that wouldn’t have been out of place on a 70s sci-fi film. An intricate, and still very danceable track that is both memorable and haunting.

As with Trans-Europe Express there’s definitely an industrial beauty in the simplicity to the songs here, and their influence on future electronic music is evident. The pulsating electronic lines repeat over and over creating a trance-like atmosphere, punctuated with simple melodies by a variety of synth sounds and vocoder infused, metallic vocals. In Das Model Kraftwerk came up with the first purely electronic banger, and in Die Mensch Maschine they came up with an album that seemed like a distillation of everything they’d been creating up to that point. I can’t see myself coming back to it all that often, but it’s an enjoyable look into the birth of electronic music.

Song Picks: Spacelab, Das model

7.5/10

Costello’s second album, and first with the Attractions, made it to number 98 on Rolling Stone’s top 500 albums of all time. The English singer-songwriter was born out of the pub rock scene in the early 70s, which was to be a major influencing factor - due to its emphasis on cheaper recordings and independent labels - on the punk rock movement of the later 70s.

This Year’s Model is full of catchy, high energy songs that bounce along with an infectious happy-go-lucky attitude. Instrumental touches such as the spritely organ on You Belong to Me and the futuristic sounding vocoder vocals that kick off Hand in Hand make the album just as much as Costello’s saturated, catchy vocals and his simple and yet effective lyrics.

(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea, written in the office Costello worked at once everyone had gone home, is a great demonstration of everything Costello and the Attractions do so well here. They pick one instrument to drive the track, in this case the bass; Costello keeps his melodies within a small range; and uses lyrics with few adjectives, forcing you to fill in the blanks somewhat in a way that changes the songs a little each time you listen to them.

The album’s closer Radio, Radio is, well, an absolute banger. The perfect bass part and celebratory organ punctuations accompany Costello’s drawled vocals like cheese complements wine as he rants about Radio’s unwillingness to play many of the era’s punk rock tunes, and their ‘anaesthetise(d)’ take on music.

It’s hard to imagine anyone disliking This Year’s Model, it sounds fresh, fun, was clearly influential on a lot of British music and yet, at a time when many bands were pushing for more complexity, revels in the simple.

Song Picks: (I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea; Radio, Radio; Pump it Up

8.5/10

10. More Songs About Buildings and Food

Talking Heads

Talking Heads’ second album is their first of three produced by our man Brian Eno, seeing them shift to a more danceable style, driven largely by Tina Weymouth’s superb bass playing. You might expect the addition of Eno as producer to have led to a more atmospheric and dense production, but in fact it leads to a more focused, bass and rhythm oriented sound which massively plays to the band’s strengths.

The album opens with Thank You for Sending Me an Angel, a song about a parent who is grateful for their child. It’s a great opener, building with it’s repeated drum shuffle and guitar part to a sudden ending, before Tina Weymouth’s tour de force starts on With Your Love, where her fluttering bass riff defines the verse. Throughout the album, her fun, simple, melodic, and clearly Motown inspired bass parts combine perfectly with Chris Frantz’s on the beat drumming to create a very danceable and bouncy rhythm while David Byrne’s nervous bursts of vocal help add some unpredictability.

This combination works a dream on all the album’s tracks, but peaks on a few tracks in particular. On The Good Thing, the rhythm guitar plays beautifully with Weymouth’s bass and Byrne’s melodies are some of the most relaxed on the record, including a chorus that has an almost anthemic quality created by the backing vocals. The bass in the bridge leads the ragged guitar skitters beautifully, like a straight flying bird guiding scattered butterflies.

Found a Job is perhaps the album’s most popular song - besides the great Take Me to the River cover, and as soon as you hear Weymouth’s iconic bass riff which sounds like the life of the party, it’s clear why. The song is essentially about a couple being bored of what’s on TV and thus creating their own show, which makes them happier. The final verse gives a direct instruction to the listener, and it’s undoubtedly an oversimplified message, but it’s a nice one to hear now and again, particularly when coming from a band making music as fun as this.

So think about this little scene, apply it to your life
If your work isn't what you love, then something isn't right
Just think of Bob and Judy, they're happy as can be
Inventing situations, putting them on TV

In fact many of the album’s lyrics are refreshingly honest, I particularly love Byrne’s cries of “I don’t have to prove I’m creative” on Artists Only, a song where the bass has an almost haunting quality to it. I’m Not In Love is almost moshable anti-love song with its speed and bounce, and again features some great, on the nose lyrics.

More Songs About Buildings and Food is as unpretentious as its title and as straight and grid like, yet odd and creative as its cover art. It’s a great advertisement of just how inventive and singular the Talking Heads were.

Song Picks: The Good Thing, Artists Only

8.5/10

Rush’s sixth album is another prog rock tour de force, and perhaps the most prog-rock of any of their albums I’ve heard so far - which is saying something. We’ve got arrangements that have clearly been thought out to the finest detail here, and one of those arrangements is a whopping 18 minutes long.

Said 18 minute whopper is the opening track CygnusX-1 Book II: Hemispheres (quite the catchy title). The song, in classic prog rock fashion, is about the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus and is a journey through endless cleverly thought out sections of music. Starting with a few heavily reverbed guitar stabs and bass drum thuds, it soon evolves into a flowing cascade of impressive musical skills. Lee hums along on his bass guitar, with that classic Rickenbacker grit, while drummer Peart is so unable to be thrown out of time by even the smallest margin that you’d be forgiven for thinking that he’s a super hero who’s origin story involves him swallowing a clock and becoming time itself. Lifeson’s phased and reverberating guitar is the prime driver for the song’s massive sound, though the minimalistic synth parts also help. I lost count of how many different sections the song had after only 4 minutes or so, but I will say that they were all a delight. Geddy Lee’s dramatic rendition of an impressively ambitious lyric fits among its musical surroundings perfectly, cutting through the mix with his high pitch, while never getting irritating. The song is the constant to-ing an fro-ing between sections that seem to glide along like a magic carpet, and others that stab like lightning from the sky. It keeps you on your toes, never gets boring, and, most impressively of all, builds to an incredibly satisfying conclusion, a rather touching and unexpected acoustic guitar outro.

Circumstances, at a mere 3 minutes and 40 seconds, feels like a ditty in comparison. It crams an un-standard amount of sections into its fairly standard running length and depicts Neil Peart’s struggles to make it as a drummer in London. Something that is rather perplexing considering how stupidly good he is, switching between tempos, time signatures, and styles with an ease I’m not sure anyone has ever replicated since. This is followed, in classic Rush style, with a song about trees. The Trees was chosen as a single along with Circumstances - probably because they’re the only ones short enough to be played on the radio - and is a particularly great demonstration of Lee’s talent for vocal melody as he sings about a conflict between oaks and maples, centred around the oaks taking up all the light. Only Rush could pull it off, and I mean that in the best possible way.

At this point, we’re left wondering why we’ve had two songs in a row that are a reasonable length on a Rush album. But this is soon rectified with the nine and a half minute closer, La Villa Strangiato, the band’s first instrumental song. Once again the band are unable to sit with a concept for more than 20 seconds and dart from section to section until they seemingly exhaust themselves around the halfway mark, where we’re blessed with relaxing bass decays and a scintillating guitar solo from Lifeson. Things build again to a riff led melee of noise so pounding it’s easy to forget that it’s being created by only three people, before we finish with bass and drum solos.

Hemispheres is another testament to Rush’s prog-rock brilliance, pushing the boundaries of how many time signatures a song should contain, but in a way that is still thoroughly enjoyable to listen to.

Song Picks: CygnusX-1 Book II: Hemispheres, The Trees

8.5/10

prallel lines.jpg — 8. Parallel Lines

Blondie

Blondie’s third album reached number 1 in the UK charts, and led to their breakthrough in the US, where it reached number 6. The album features many of the group’s most famous songs, including Hanging on the Telephone and Heart of Glass.

Debbie Harry’s vocals are superb throughout the album, going seamlessly from a growl on the punchy One Way or Another; to more gentle and melodic on Picture This, where her trademark rasp appears during the song’s rather massive climax, aided by some great guitars from the group’s co-founder Chris Stein; to almost dreamy on the country inspired Fade Away. She even goes slightly Patti Smith in the opening of the Brooke Shields inspired Pretty Baby.

The band gets rather heavy at times, Stein’s cataclysmic riff on I Know But I Don’t Know wouldn’t be out of place on a Black Sabbath album, and Harry’s glassy vocals juxtapose well with the din created by the rest of the band while Clem Burke’s cymbal averse drumming - until the bridge - helps stop it leaning too much into ‘metal’. Stein’s guitar solo is a delight of chaotic, careering fuzz.

Before we get to the jewel of the album’s second side we discover 11:59 and Will Anything Happen, two songs that again demonstrate the band’s talent for catchy melodies, and the way they’re able to fill out the sound spectrum with a fairly straightforward rock sound that’s somehow much more interesting than that. The stair-like jitters on the latter are a good example of how the band know exactly when to mix it up to keep things interesting without overdoing it. Sunday Girl is a rare song where they seem to fail to do this and the piece sounds a bit more formulaic than other tracks on the album, though it’s still well written and enjoyable enough.

The jewel of side two is, of course, the masterpiece Heart of Glass, the band’s most famous song. Opening with a bass and guitar riff as iconic as anything ever written, things reach even headier heights once Harry’s perfect glassy vocal enters. It feels like the first real ‘club banger’ we’ve come across in this challenge. It sounds massive, with that iconic melody worming it’s way into your brain via Harry’s vocals and that mountainous synth in the bridge. The production on the piece is some of the best I’ve heard on anything so far, with tastefully added double-tracks, hummed sections, vocal ad-libs and that prophetic synth adding to what is already a tune with a whole lot going for it. 5 minutes and 50 seconds hardly seems enough time to contain something so brilliant.

Parallel Lines is a truly great and influential pop album. Harry’s happy to try her hand at a whole host of vocal styles, sometimes within the same song, and the band follows suit with performances and ideas that help make sure things never grow stale. It has a bit more of a ‘collection of songs’ feel than an album to me, which is what holds it back slightly, but when the songs are this good, that’s not much of an issue.

Song Picks: I Know But I Don’t Know, Hanging on the Telephone, Heart of Glass, One Way or Another

8.5/10

7. Darkness on the Edge of Town

Bruce Springsteen

Bruce is back with his fourth album, and first since 1975’s masterpiece Born to Run. While 1975’s effort usually outshines it in terms of popularity, Darkness on the Edge of Town was ranked by Rolling Stone as the 91st best album of all time, and received pretty much only positive reviews on its release. It continues to be a fan favourite, and features songs that remain mainstays of Bruce’s live sets today.

The album is less commercial than its predecessor, and also less energetic in general, though plenty of Born to Run’s vivacity is evident in the meteoric opener Badlands - a perfect segue from Born to Run’s messages of escape, to Darkness on the Edge of Town’s more introspective tone. Springsteen explores the characters that don’t fit in - as he has during much of his career - and nowhere is this clearer than on the ‘ballad of the black sheep of the family’ Adam Raised a Cain, which features one of Springsteen’s rockiest backdrops. Something in the Night takes a gentler turn, and seems to be referencing Bruce’s lawsuit with his manager in the verse:

Well you're born with nothing
And better off that way
Soon as you've got something they send
Someone to try and take it away

It’s another song about a freedom, with plenty of car imagery as you’d expect. In an album full of captivating vocal performances, this is perhaps one of the best, full of long notes and seemingly performed straight from the soul, it sounds like the crumbled American dream itself is singing to you. The chorus rings with both despair and the triumph of having finally hit the bottom from where there’s no way but up. The same could be said for Racing in the Street, another affecting song of freedom hung on a simple piano part that’s one of the most beautiful things on the album, or indeed on any of these albums. Springsteen’s vocals are as sad as a lonely night, but with the melody of someone who sees the beauty in it all.

It’s not until Promised Land that Bruce regains some energy, which he combines with perhaps his most powerful hook “Mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a man, And I believe in a promised land” to create another powerful anthem of escape, and one I’d argue is perhaps his most brilliant. Clemons’ sax solo is as free as a migrating bird, and harkens back to his meteoric performances on Born to Run.

The title track, which closes the album, is one of Springsteen’s masterpieces. A song that meditates on how we spend our lives distracting ourselves from dealing with the darkness in ourselves, in a similar way that society ignores the ‘darkness on the edge of town’. The laboured way the song’s title is sung in the chorus contrasts perfectly with the more explosive vocal parts in the song, representing, to me, how our dreams and thoughts are often so far detached from the dark reality.

Darkness on the Edge of town is another great album about the existential struggle of the working man, something Bruce has made a career out of. And when you see the artistry, poetry, and earnest performances that grace this album, it’s easy to see why.

Song Picks: Promised Land, Badlands, Racing in the Street, Darkness on the Edge of Town

9/10

Created by layering tape loops of differing lengths, Eno’s sixth album sees him moving firmly into the ambient genre he was to pioneer. As the title suggests, this was designed to be played on a loop continuously in airports, an environment Eno felt could do with becoming less stressful. Eno himself described the idea of ambient music as being “as ignorable as it is interesting” and that it would “induce calm and a space to think”.

As someone with a busy brain that isn’t always my friend, I’ve always had a soft-spot for ambient music as a way to ‘induce calm’ as Eno says above. Though this isn’t the first release that could be described as ambient music, it is the first album to explicitly label itself as that, and thus to me is undoubtedly the birth of the genre.

1/1 opens the album with soft and slow interweaving piano lines that are repeated throughout, backed by gentle atmospheric synths. It’s minimalistic in the extreme, but it’s ability to relax you is quite something, and despite its simplicity, there’s enough gentle creativity and beauty in the track for it to work both when listening intently, or when half-listening. The following 2/1 features vocals backed by a synth. Again, the piece is just a series of loops repeating themselves to a timescale that means they never come back into sync. With that, it continuously feels very familiar and safe, while never sounding the same. A masterstroke that again tricks the brain into feeling completely at home, while never getting bored. The second side continues much like the first, with gorgeous repeating melodies being played out at different times creating a cloudy, dreamy atmosphere.

Ambient 1: Music for Airports, is remarkable in that it achieves exactly what it sets out to do, and proves once again the amazing effect music has on our brains. It’s an audio version of a port in a storm, and they really should start playing it in airports.

Song Picks: 1/1, 1/2

9/10

The title of Wire’s second album apparently refers to the British expression “he’s got a few chairs missing in his front room”, one which I’ve never heard but that reminds me of the Swiss expression “he’s missing a few glasses in his cupboard”. The album sees the band experiment with more developed song structures and adds synth and keyboards to their arsenal.

There’s a darkness to the songs here, something evident from the opening track Practice Makes Perfect, which the bass tries its best to make jolly, but is made rather haunting by the reverberated laughter that appears in the second half of the track. Lyrically, the song is about waiting to go up to Sarah Bernhardt’s - a French actress from the 19th century - room. The following French Film Blurred is more difficult to decipher, and sets the tone for an album that is both rather weird, and yet completely fascinating. Glimpses of the punk from their debut re-appear at times. Such as the catchy bass part on Men 2nd and the bouncy guitars on Sand in my Joints, but they’re generally blurred by the dark, ambient soundscapes the band is now creating.

Marooned features probably my favourite lyric, one that seems to portray a complete loneliness that is perfectly emphasised by the distorted guitar that sounds as if it’s coming from miles a way and the bumbling bass that seems like it’s trying to comfort our singer, who mumbles his way through the pretty and desolate word picture he’s built. Being Sucked in Again is the perfect mix of the more catchy nature of their debut, and the darker, more intriguing nature of this effort. The riffs and chants of ‘being sucked in again’ worm their way into your ears, while some of the effects on the instruments create an atmosphere that makes the song endlessly more interesting than the simple one it is on the surface, with that almost underwater bass sound being particularly brilliant. The album’s highlight though is perhaps Mercy, a six minute tirade of blaring, crunchy, guitars that make Colin Newman’s vocals almost inaudible, finishing with a Robert Gotobed (what a surname) smashing the drum kit with some robotic quarter notes as the guitars threaten to swallow him whole. It’s probably the most ‘post-rock’ track I’ve heard so far on this challenge.

Chairs Missing is a mood; dreamy, dark, mysterious and untouchable in equal measure. It’s not often I describe an album as fascinating, but I think Chairs Missing is just that.

Song Picks: Marooned, Being Sucked in Again, Heartbeats, Mercy, Outdoor Miner

9/10

Sun Ra was a bit of a character. He abandoned his birth name in the 1940s, taking the name Le Sony'r Ra, shortened to Sun Ra (after Ra, the Egyptian God of the Sun). He also claimed to be an Alien from Saturn on a mission to preach peace and denied any links with his previous identity.

Musically, he’s known for avant-garde, jazz inspired music with extensive use of his synthesiser playing. A prolific artist, Sun Ra had already released well over 30 albums by the time Lanquidity was released in 1978.

Lanquidity opens with the suitably sci-fi title track. The horns gently breathing like an alien life-force as nostalgic twinkles and echoes accompany them to create an otherworldly, mysterious, and slightly gloomy atmosphere. The album comes back to planet Earth with the groovy Where Pathways Meet, a song that’d make a perfect companion to marching elephants in a grittier remake of the Jungle Book, with it’s clunking percussion, and broad brass lines accompanied by some virtuoso guitar twiddling. That’s How I Feel continues the more accessible feel, built on a simple rumbling bassline that grounds the otherwise relaxingly free sax, piano and guitar parts that sound as if they’re discussing world peace in the language of music.

Sun Ra’s synth work on Twin Stars of Thence is probably the album’s most magical moment; playing perfectly off Richard Williams’ bass walk he scatters notes into the ether like an unstoppable, gentle firework as the piece builds slowly to John Gilmore’s solo, and finally Disco Kid’s superb guitar twinkles. It’s 9 minutes of pure jazz bliss. Everything closes with the infinitely weirder, but also strikingly pretty There are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of), which puts you back on the planet we visited in track one, filling out some of the details. Sketching the wind with warm saxophone blasts, and the stars with subtle xylophone taps. The spoken words whisper in either ear, absorbing you fully into this weird world as surprisingly calm screeches and creative synth sounds fill out this rather magical sound experiment.

Lanquidity is surprisingly accessible for how experimental it is, and it’s one of those rare records that creates a mood very much its own.

Song Picks: Where Pathways Meet, That’s How I Feel, Twin Stars of Thence

9/10

The Stones’ 14th British, and 16th American studio album is the first to feature Ronnie Wood as a full time member and sees them take a more disco direction, inspired by Mick Jagger and their decline in popularity since 1972’s Exile on Main Street.

The turn to a disco influence was a good one in my books, as Jagger’s energy, Wyman’s grooving bass lines, and the more rock ‘n’ roll nature of Richards’ guitar work and Wyman’s drumming make for an infectious blend of the two genres.

The album is injected with a great playfulness and fun that is evident from the first bass notes of Miss You - quite probably one of my very favourite bass parts. The “oooh oooh oooh” parts glide perfectly over Wyman’s impossibly groovy bass as Jagger energetically talks of feelings of longing. It’s the kind of song that immediately gets me dancing about, much like the following When the Whip Comes Down - which features yet another infectious bass part from Wyman, and which has a bouncy feel despite it’s rather dark and tragic story of a gay drifter. Just My Imagination features some classic Keith Richards noodling before his blurry riff helps create yet another winner of a chorus.

Some Girls saw the Stones getting rather controversial again. Their label wanted them to cut the song, which essentially talks about what women of various nationalities and races do. Jagger refused, saying that the song was a parody of racist attitudes, something he’d have probably had an easier time selling if his delivery didn’t sound so frolicsome in most of their other songs too. Far Away Eyes is a personal favourite of mine. A perfect tongue-in-cheek country song with lines like the below that always make me laugh:

And the preacher said, "You know, you always have the
Lord by your side"
And I was so pleased to be informed of this
That I ran twenty red lights in his honour

Some Girls is very Rolling Stones, Jagger hasn’t grown up, but he continues to give vocal performances that are as engaging as any from the time, with a bristling energy and immediacy to them on every song. Combine that with great melodies, groovy as hell bass parts, and the general feeling of a band having a good time - similar to that on the classic Exile on Main Street - and you have a winner of an album. You can’t take it too seriously, but then I doubt the Stones want you to.

Song Picks: Shattered, Far Away Eyes, Miss you

9/10

The English singer-songwriter’s debut album includes her number one hit in the UK, Wuthering Heights, and reached number 3 in the albums chart. It was critically acclaimed across the board on release, and has continued to receive universal praise since. The album was produced by David Gilmour’s friend Andrew Powell, and executive produced by David Gilmour himself, who funded Bush’s very first demos having been impressed by them in 1972, when Bush was just 13.

Things kick off with some whale song on the opening track, Moving, which was a hit in Japan. The song is a perfect introduction to Bush’s considerable talent. Her vocals start impossibly high and perfect, gliding over the soft piano like some ethereal being. The chorus melody is gorgeous and elevated by a production that doesn’t have too much going on, but is still very full sounding. Bush’s floating vocals - which probably have the largest range I’ve ever heard in a vocalist - are certainly the hallmark of the album, bringing to life the angelic melodies of Strange Phenomena and many more, but let’s not forget the rest of the music shall we? David Paton’s bass guitar on Kite provides the perfect counterpart to probably Bush’s highest vocal on the album, and it’s as if it’s mumbling agreement with Bush’s calls to “come up and be a kite”. The song is fun, bouncy, and impeccably performed on all fronts, with variations in tempo keeping things fresh.

It’s hard to listen to the album without getting the feeling you’ve been blessed by some angel from the heavens, and songs that could easily have been a bit boring, like The Man with the Child in His Eyes are elevated to being wondrous because of Andrew Powell’s dramatic arrangements and Bush’s soaring vocals.

Wuthering Heights is, of course, the album’s most famous song and it’s now rather perplexing that Bush had to press for it to be released as the first single, as her record company were pressing for Jesus and the Cold Gun. Kate Bush turned out to be right obviously, and it remains Bush’s most successful single to this day, spending 4 weeks at number 1 on the British chart. The song features one of the most recognisable and unique chorus melodies ever written, one that sounds as if it was composed by some musically talented birds longing for the return of the sun. Ian Bairnson’s understated guitar solo is the perfect ending. A song about the novel after which it’s named, it’s one of the best songs ever written, completely incomparable to anything that has come before or since.

The second side opens with perhaps the album’s most by the numbers track, the aforementioned James and the Cold Gun. The vulnerable, and beautifully simple retelling of a sexual encounter on Feel It is particularly memorable, and is followed quickly by the fun and endlessly interesting Oh to Be in Love, featuring rare male vocals, which provide a great foundation to Bush’s, in a chorus that’s one of the most enjoyable on the record. The album’s final four tracks continue to display Bush’s endless vocal talent and the tasteful and interesting arrangements, maintaining the feeling that you’re listening to something that’s just dropped from the sky.

Song Picks: Kite, Wuthering Heights, Strange Phenomena, Oh to be in Love

9/10

Music for 18 Musicians, a work of instrumental minimalism first premiered in 1976, but a recording of the piece wasn’t released until 1978. Reich’s first attempt at writing for larger ensembles, the piece is based on a cycle of eleven chords, with pieces of music based on one chord effortlessly flowing into a short piece based on another etc.

The album is made up of the single 56 minute title piece, which swells and sparkles from chord to chord putting you into a relaxed trance state. It feels like a quicker, livelier version of something like Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports, with repetition creating a homely familiarity within the subtle, slow changes in the piece. Although there’s a whole host of instruments playing here, such as pianos, marimbas and xylophones, there’s rarely more than 2 of each instrument, creating a sound that maintains its intimacy, something the fact nothing is electronic here also helps add to. The real masterstroke however is Reich’s decision to focus on the breath of his musicians, instructing them to create pulses present throughout the piece by repeating breaths in the same time intervals for as long as their lungs would let them. This makes the piece feel like a living, breathing entity, and it becomes more than just music, but something you swear you could touch. When this idea reaches its climax with a female voice creating pulses using the same idea, I could have sworn I entered a parallel universe for a fleeting moment.

I’ve always been a big believer in certain albums coming to life in certain situations, and Robert Christgau’s claim that the album ‘sounds great in the evening by the sea’ has me rather excited to try that one day. For now though, I’ll just have to listen its intricate pitter-patter melodies and gorgeous minimalism and imagine the waves lapping the pebbles by the sea, the wind pressing my baggy shirt against my skin, and the seagulls nesting noisily in the cliffs, all given new vibrant colours through the lens of Reich’s magnificent creation. It’s all rather easy to imagine when listening to something so majestic.

9.5/10