Descent Into The Maelstrom, A - Philip Glass

Advantages: Supreme Electro Thrash
Disadvantages: Too short

...on the edge of chaos, but Mr Reznor manages to keep the whole thing in check perfectly balancing noise and structure. What follows next is as equally bewildering the slow spacey Goth/Cowboy twang of Help me I am in hell , calming the battered senses. Again this leads one in a short beguiling calm before all of heaven and hell is let loose. The track which kicks off this descent into the sonic maelstrom is Happiness in Slavery , the closest Nine Inch Nails have come to delivered straight up hard beat dance floor action. A storming assault on the feet as well as the mind. The album is ended (or is it ?) by a return to electro thrash of Gave up, Trent's vocals so heavily distorted at the beginning it sounds like he is sinking into quicksand. You think it's all over but at the end (or on a separate 7" on Vinyl) there are two extra tracks, both... Read review

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Advantages: Elegant, modern, traditional yet unique
Disadvantages: Not enough people will ever listen to it

.... Of Max Richter I know little except being a pianist of German descent but working in the UK. He worked with The Future Sound of London on Dead Cities and The Iseness, which makes sense when you listen to TBN, because Richter describes the music as Post-Classical, which it both is and isn't. You see, TBN is both very unusual and very orthodox. Richter admits that post-production is important to his music and here it is very apparent but not always. We begin simply, with a voice and the sound of a typewriter. The words are from Kafka (his The Blue Notebooks, would you believe?). The voice belongs to Tilda Swinton and she brings us into the music, minimalist piano that is a little similar to Philip Glass' Solo Piano. Slow, beautiful and certainly haunting but also very traditional - there's something warm and close about the music... Read review

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Advantages: As elegant an introduction to Glass' music as it is a source of joy to the inititated
Disadvantages: None to this enthralled listener

...Recorded in 1982, for a series of six CDs for CBS, Glassworks is a Philip Glass primer. It's not a compilation, more of an introduction to the master minimalist. To quote Glass directly "Glassworks was intended to introduce my music to a more general audience than had been familiar with it up to then". And indeed it does. It represents one of his most accessible works, as well as being one of his most haunting and most beautiful. For those less conversant with Philip Glass, he has been 'lumped' into the Minimalist bracket, along with other modern composer such as Steve Reich, Terry Reilly and to a lesser extent John Adams. In general Glass is the most successful and probably the least respected. The origins in this seem to be both his prolific output, his consistency of quality as well as his trademark rhythmical repetitions... Read review

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