Consumer Guide Album

Steve Reich: Radio Rewrite [Nonesuch, 2014]
Although I admire Reich in general and love Music for 18 Musicians in particular, he does dig him some austere, and austere I can live without. But here Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood performs one of Reich's more virtuosic pieces and Reich returns the favor by assigning minimalist variations on some cunningly concealed Radiohead themes to the alert experimentalists Alarm Will Sound. Right, no one would call it a party. But the rock sonorities are very much a comfort nonetheless. So I expect to get my secondary Reich fix here from now on. And while sticking with Kid A, I'll probably get my secondary Radiohead fix here too. In prog of any vintage or cultural orientation, minimalist rigor rocks. A−