Philip Glass: Analog

Album review

Although most of us have come to know the music of Philip Glass through one recording or another, he came rather late to utilizing recording as a means to aid composition -- the recordings on Orange Mountain Music's Analog, his first multi-track recordings, date from 1977 and 1980. Overall, Glass doesn't seem to have used such techniques often for purposes of composing, preferring to work with conventionally written out scores, live instruments, orchestras, or at a piano or keyboard. Analog contains pieces taken from the oldest two-inch tapes in Glass' own archive and remixed in the digital domain. Although issued here under its original title of Etoile Polaire, the first work included is the same recording issued by Virgin in 1977 as North Star; the CD version of that early LP was still being traded by EMI in October 2006. The difference, and it's a significant one, is that the Orange Mountain Music is taken from the original multi-track and mixed as though it were a new recording, whereas Virgin's North Star would have as its source a two-track master mixed down for the LP. It is amazing to hear how well the Orange Mountain CD can reproduce the analog audio signal of the original tape, delivering low bass notes from the electronic organ parts, that tend to disappear on vinyl, with the kind of crispness and fidelity one only could've heard in a recording studio back in the '70s.
Mad Rush, better known as a piano piece and recorded by Glass in 1989 for the CBS album Philip Glass: Solo Piano, is heard in an organ version recorded for the use of choreographer Lucinda Childs in 1980. Dressed Like an Egg, composed for the 1977 Holland Festival, is musically related to Another Look at Harmony Part IV but practically to the session that produced Etoile Polaire. Analog is a disc of certain interest to those intrigued by Glass' early career and features a terrific photo of a trim Glass on the front, with a full head of unruly hair and surrounded by vintage Farfisas of the kind heard on these recordings. However, an additional aspect of this music that is intriguing is how much of it relates to Glass' later output, proving that Glass' work is nothing if not consistent.

© TiVo