Steve Reich – Queen City Sounds and Art

Listen to Erik Hall’s Bold and Lively Interpretation of Steve Reich’s “Music For a Large Ensemble”

Erik Hall will release his new album Solo Three on January 23, 2026 via Western Vinyl. The composer and multi-instrumentalist interpreted pieces by Glenn Branca, Charlemagne Palestine, Laurie Spiegel and perhaps most ambitious of the group, “Music For a Large Ensemble” by Steve Reich. The composition originally written in 1978 for at least 23 performers finds its bright, lively spirit in dazzling sonic detail with its component parts supporting, augmenting and complementing each other in short and then longer lines back to those shorter and alterations in accent and volume to bring to the experience of listening an organic feel and one that stimulates the mind with the simple joy of its arrangements. Hall uses a divergent sound palette with synths, organs, pianos, guitar, bass (all performed, recorded and mixed by himself—impressive on its own) to lend a modern almost electronic music aesthetic to one of Reich’s classics. Listen to “Music For a Large Ensemble” on YouTube and follow Erik Hall at the links below.

Erik Hall on Twitter

Erik Hall on Facebook

Erik Hall on Instagram

Erik Hall’s Brilliant Solo Interpretation of Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians Preserves the Relentless Pace and Physicality of the Original With a Smaller Sound Palette

ErikHall_Pulses1 — Erik Hall, photo courtesy the artist

Erik Hall recently conceived of and recorded his interpretation of Steve Reich’s seminal, avant-garde, 1976 masterpiece Music For 18 Musicians (due out May 8, 2020 via Western Vinyl). Hall’s version of the aforementioned work is only the second ever successfully accomplished by a solo artist. The lead single from the record, one of the sections of “Pulses,” was performed with muted pianos, electric guitar and synth. But as with the original, the relentless pace, the percussive and textural quality to the tones that convey a physicality like getting the raw data packets, the very quanta, of existence as expressed through a minimal flow of composed and arranged sounds that contain a diverse complexity in themselves. Reich’s 1976 performance of the music was aptly titled and used classical instruments in a unique way to almost mimic what electronic music would sound like later and in its way it must be seen as an influence on ambient music much as was John Cage, 60s avant-garde, early synth music, Krautrock and library music. Listen to a sample of Hall’s loving rendition of Reich’s music on Soundcloud and connect with Erik Hall at the links below.

twitter.com/erikhallmusic
facebook.com/erikhallofficial
instagram.com/intallbuildings

ROOM8 Brings Its Signature Gift for Retronoir Synth Pop Soul to New Single “West (ft. Mavrick)”

ROOM8_West_art_cropped — ROOM8, “West (ft. Mavrick)” single cover (cropped)

ROOM8, the Stockholm-based production duo, always gets compared to the soundtrack to Drive. But it’s really the quality of that sound that resonates. That sense of time and place that blurred the line between an 80s synth pop sensibility with the R&B inflection favored by many of the groups from the UK and modern electrosoul compositional style made its songwriting ideal for a film with the aesthetics of Drive. Its new single “West (ft. Maverick)” has a similar vibe with bright tones and synth swells coupled with gently soulful vocals. A bit like a cross between Foreigner on “Waiting For a Girl Like You” and Giorgio Moroder’s “Scarface (Push It to the Limit).” A midpoint between the urgency of the latter and the languid pace of the former but that dreamlike quality of both and the vibrancy of sound placing it in a similarly compellingly liminal emotional space. Fun fact: Ezra Reich’s father is legendary avant-garde composer Steve Reich.

soundcloud.com/room8-official