Recorded stay in Berlin in 1975 however not launched till 1982, Descending Moonshine Dervishes represents a continuation of the cadenza-like improvisations Riley captured on Persian Surgical procedure Dervishes, recorded between 1971 and 1972 in Los Angeles and Paris. The titles of each albums, with their reference to Sufism’s whirling worshippers, supply a way of the spinning motions of the music, a blur of arpeggiated figures and knotty patterns unfold throughout the left and proper palms. On each albums, he used a Yamaha YC 45D electrical organ whose sign was routed into a fancy delay chain, and in each instances, the organ was modified to play in simply intonation, a tuning system whose brilliant, wide-open intervals sound faintly alien to listeners accustomed to Western music’s equal temperament.
Attempting to tease out particular variations between Descending Moonshine Dervishes and Persian Surgical procedure Dervishes is a bit of bit like evaluating a single stretch of river in numerous climate situations. However the place the keyboard within the 1971-72 live shows is heat and radiant, with an virtually churchly solid, Descending Moonshine Dervishes strikes a extra unsettling be aware, brittle and infrequently buzzing with overtones. Riley’s chords really feel subtly distorted, bent out of form. Listening to the way in which sure chords appear to drag away from the foundation be aware, I think about magnetic fields at work. In locations, the organ’s reed-like tone sounds virtually medieval, conjuring photos of felt-hatted pipers in cobblestoned city squares, although Riley’s repertoire of polyrhythms and melodic figures are rooted within the ragas that he was finding out in India with the classical singer Pandit Pran Nath.
“It’s not rocket science,” Riley quipped of his approach. However even when the nuts and bolts of how he made the music, it’s troublesome to parse the underlying mechanics. You may be capable to pinpoint the slap-back delay, however any try and decipher which hand is taking part in what, or which phrases are an impact of the tape versus being performed in actual time, is futile. The peculiarities of the Yamaha organ, with its two manuals, a number of registers, and tone-control levers, lend to shape-shifting timbres. Riley is a remarkably dexterous participant even with out the usage of results; listening to him right here, geared up with what for the time was a novel and high-tech setup, it’s onerous to fathom that simply two palms are chargeable for every thing that comes streaming from the audio system, with no overdubs.
Over the album’s 51-minute runtime, the music is consistently evolving. Sluggish, contemplative melodies morph imperceptibly into icy waterfalls of trebly tones and again into bassy dirges. Sweetly consonant harmonies abruptly curdle, throwing off bitter, complicated dissonance. Tinkling chimes counsel angelic symphonies. Often, a phased buzz anticipates the tubular glow of early Oneohtrix Level By no means. But all these modifications occur completely seamlessly, and with one thing approaching bliss. Round this time, Riley was performing all-night live shows, giving him an much more ample canvas to experiment together with his psychedelically enveloping concepts. Descending Moonshine Dervishes likewise appears like a snapshot of a for much longer continuum, a quick snippet of infinity rendered in probably the most rapturous phrases. One of many central motifs, a rising and falling four-note determine, is nearly childlike; I think about a five-year-old’s singsong question—“Are we there but?”—repeated time and again because the panorama flies by the backseat home windows in a blur. The pleasure, in fact, is within the journey; the enjoyment of Riley’s piece is in deferring the ultimate vacation spot so long as potential.
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