Digitally Imported Forums - View Single Post - Terry Riley

Sweep · Feb 8th, 2009, 07:16 PM

I've just found this thread while Googling for interesting forums using Terry Riley as bait.

I agree with the last poster - Rainbow seems hardly `far out.' But the minimalist approach may be a bit hard to take for people who aren't used to that.

I'm puzzled about the problems with fitting Riley into a genre for these forums - and similarly with Philip Glass. Both would surely fit most easily into a minimalist section of the forum, and there is in fact such a section here.

But that leads to another point - the contemporary fixation with genres. Why not just let it be music and relate to it exactly as it is, without having to put it in some safe kind of box?

One other thing - the second side of the original album is totally different from A Rainbow in Curved Air. Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band is slower, slowly evolving and not rhythmic the way Rainbow is. Trying to force it into an Ambient genre still may not help, but it's worth bearing in mind that Riley took two quite different approaches to music based on repeated structures on this album.

Feb 8th, 2009, 07:16 PM	#19 (permalink)
Sweep Addict in Training Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Britain Posts: 2	I've just found this thread while Googling for interesting forums using Terry Riley as bait. I agree with the last poster - Rainbow seems hardly `far out.' But the minimalist approach may be a bit hard to take for people who aren't used to that. I'm puzzled about the problems with fitting Riley into a genre for these forums - and similarly with Philip Glass. Both would surely fit most easily into a minimalist section of the forum, and there is in fact such a section here. But that leads to another point - the contemporary fixation with genres. Why not just let it be music and relate to it exactly as it is, without having to put it in some safe kind of box? One other thing - the second side of the original album is totally different from A Rainbow in Curved Air. Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band is slower, slowly evolving and not rhythmic the way Rainbow is. Trying to force it into an Ambient genre still may not help, but it's worth bearing in mind that Riley took two quite different approaches to music based on repeated structures on this album.