playlist: experimental music – Africa Express, Colin Webster, Rutger Zuydervelt, Laurie Spiegel

A funky version of Terry Riley’s In C, a rare John Cage/Leonard Bernstein collaboration, an album of cello glissandi, and a project on 1950s telephone operators – consider your mind expanded

Its 1964 premiere in San Francisco – with wannabe composer Steve Reich pulse-anchoring the performance by punching out top C on a keyboard – heralded the onset of what would become known as minimalism. But far from being a relic of experimental music’s past, Terry Riley’s In C remains open to constant reinvention. This 50th-anniversary performance pairs musicians from Mali (Adama Koita, Bijou, Modibo Diawara, et al) with Africa Express mainstays such as Brian Eno and Damon Albarn, who collectively make good on Riley’s invitation to journey through 53 melodic fragments, each musician progressing at their own pace. The profound clarity of the recording walks your ears inside an orgiastic heterophony of meshed-together lines. And this is the funkiest In C on the planet.

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by Philip Clark via Electronic music | The Guardian