11 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"lost" piece of Minimalist music, December 10, 2002
This review is from: Tony Conrad: Early Minimalism, Vol. 1 (Audio CD)
Ignore the other three c.d.'s. They're cool, the videos are great (especially "flicker") but the point here is "four violins" recorded while Tony Conrad was still a member of the original Dream syndicate/theatre of eternal music, which is exceeded only by John Cage, Monk and Ellington in terms of influence on twentieth century american art music (primarily through a little rock band Conrad,Cale and Maclise formed after they left La Monte Young with some kids named Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison. Called themselves "the Velvet Underground". Maybe you've heard of them). It is an excellent piece of music, that before the current findings was along with the first two Velvets records (and that white album dream syndicate radio bootleg) the only way to get a general idea of how they sounded without taking Terry Riley's word for it (and they sounded nothing like "a rainbow in curved air"). Violin with guitar strings, played through guitar amps, layers of distortion, at times the timbres resemble accordions or bagpipes, all in those modes he's so crazy about that he seems to think are pre- pythagorean. One of the great compositions/recordings of minimal music, makes the entire recorded output of Phillip Glass and most of Reich sound like Mannaheim Steamroller.
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