Glass Planets

I don't know where we were in time, but if it were a Sunday and he were home, I'd join my Dad in the livingroom to listen to music. We'd read or play chess and I'd pinch sips from his whisky. If winter kept us, there'd be a fire. I remember one time, while reading The House With The Clock In Its Walls by John Bellairs, he put on Glassworks, by Philip Glass. It shook me. I'd never heard anything like it in my life. I'd always known I'd liked cyclical rhythm (I'd tried to throw a 'techno' dance party one year for my 9th birthday in England using Jon & Vangelis, it got booed off by my fat Greek friend Kerry: afterall, it wasn't MJ), but this was altogether something else entirely. I begged for more.. and so Dad dropped the Powaqqatsi bomb on me. The opener, Serra Pelada, immediately told me: this is the sound of marching orphans. Brass explosions, space-horns, child-choirs, worryingly brooding strings, mad percussion, eery samples from all over the globe: it's all here. Philip Glass, Powaqqatsi. Changed my life.

ps. another composer who really impressed me and John Williams is Gustav Holst. I remember one day in Canada my Dad being so excited to listen to the new The Planets he'd just picked up (I think by Andre Previn). You'll likely have heard Mars - The Bringer of War and Jupiter - The Bringer of Jollity has been butchered and repackaged into commercial snippets. My favourite is Saturn, that one rings. Use headphones or balanced speakers with bulldozers for subwoofers.