Classic CD: Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians

CD cover: Steve Reich, Music for 18 Musicians.

Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians is one of the pillars of American Minimalism. It was written in 1976 for an ensemble of four pianos, strings, clarinet, mallet instruments and women's voices.

These musicians navigate a sonic voyage that demands total immersion from listeners; and the subsequent trip or trance can be almost frighteningly irresistible.

The cantankerous Robert Christgau, the self-styled dean of rock critics, was very taken with Reich's mix of the mathematical and the organic here, even if it was "uplifting at best, calming at normal, and Muzaky at worst".

Yet four decades have not dimmed or tarnished its gleam. A CD of Music by Brad Lubman and his Ensemble Signal, the sixth since Reich's 1978 ECM recording, affirms its masterpiece status.

The Signal musicians lay out their philosophies in a mission statement that emphasises the diversity of their playlists, together with the need to work with music for which there is a pressing need in contemporary cultural life.

They talk of visionary composers and the 79-year-old Reich certainly fits that bill. Minimalist music has always banked on the hypnotic lure of the mesmeric, at its most tiresome in the metronomic wallpaper that Philip Glass lays out. Reich is far less literal, actively toying with our preconceptions and perceptions.

His early "Phasing" pieces, with instruments deliberately out of sync with one another, brought with them an almost out-of-body experience. Yet, Reich does not want it to be too easy. In 1968, laying out his musical expectations, he emphasised the need for perceptible processes, wanting the listener to hear the processes and structures underpinning the all-enveloping dazzle and shimmer.

So it is with Music for 18 Musicians, from the beginning when the cello enters and darkens the bright malleted chords. A dancing marimba rhythm launches the next section and, eventually, a blaze of chiming joyousness on which I could imagine overlaying the opening chorus of Bach's Magnificat. Far-fetched? Maybe. Why not buy it and take yourself on the sonic trip of your life?

Verdict: "Ace American ensemble makes minimalist classic gleam anew"