4. Steve ReichDrumming

The first time I heard that piece I can’t remember where I was. They were doing it at rock shows. It was this piece that was like 40 years old, but they were playing it in front of an audience and it was completely new to a majority of the audience. I don’t even know if I had seen it performed live until that point and I didn’t even recognise the piece even though it’s so iconic. It just blew me away and I went back and listened to the piece almost constantly. Whenever I had a long flight it was always in the repertoire to listen to and it made me think a lot about space. As much as Reich is a minimalist, he’s also a maximalist. He wants to fill as much space with as little stuff as possible. I just kept thinking about how important percussion is.

At the time I was writing mainly with just computer and the only sounds I could really get that sounded ‘real’ were either synth sounds or impact sounds, sounds that didn’t have any decay. So like a tom drum or a snare drum or marimba all sounded real enough that I could tolerate the sample of them. I feel like that’s why I started working with so many of them. Sometime around Spiderman Of The Rings I got really into this piece.