Four songs for you, and the line from Steve Reich to noise remixes of Carly Rae Jepsen
- "Shebang II", Oren Ambarchi
I found "Shebang", a lovely little EP thing, on Tidal and was immediately enraptured by the second track, a dark and atmospheric cauldron of unpredictably roiling bass and jazz noises. Like the sound of a jazz band waking up from a nap.
The whole album is really worth a listen, and I'd honestly recommend just doing that instead of listening to the sole song. The whole thing flows well, and "II" extends into a 3-song suite. You can find that here as a YouTube playlist or here on Bandcamp.
- "It's Gonna Rain, Pt. II", Steve Reich
"It's Gonna Rain" is based on a recording of a San Francisco street preacher (Brother Walter) and "phasing" (multiple copies of a tape play at slightly different speeds, drifting in and out of sync; a technique Steve Reich discovered by accident while arranging this exact piece).
The first part, which sounds oddly like trance music, Reich exhibited in 1965; there's an interview where Reich says he initially withheld this, the darker and more-complex second part, fearing it was imbued with so much chaos its release would be dangerous for the world.
- "Music for Airports 1/2", Brian Eno
This is the start of side 2 of "Ambient I: Music for Airports", Eno's infamous album that coined "ambient music" and caused his experimental music to forever overshadow his pop work (w/ Roxy Music, David Bowie etc).
The songs all utilize Reich-style phasing of long loops— usually containing just a few scattered notes surrounded by silence, which then collide and separate over time like drifting asteroids. (There's a graphical score distributed with the album that purports to show how the phases line up.) This track is the most complex, and my favorite.
Although MFA is great ambient for many contexts, in my opinion it is not appropriate for airports. It's just not the right mood.
This is the acapella version of "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, layered on itself 147 times exponentially increasing. Self-explanatory.
There is a clear line running through Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Brian Eno, Negativland, Plunderphonics, Martin Arnold, "It's Over 9000!"/YTP/YTMND and Neil Cicierega/meme mashups. It's all one artistic tradition.