It has been a few years since Terry Riley has released an album with any meat to it. This double CD represents the first major recorded work Riley has done in a long time and it is a sprawling and intense journey. However, it is far from a return to form and a number of flaws get in the way of this being listed alongside his classic works.
One of Riley’s hallmarks has been his accessibility but Aleph is a cantankerous beast. Performed on a Korg Triton Studio 88 keyboard in just intonation, I was expecting something along the lines of his organ works from the 60s or perhaps an electric version of the gorgeous just intonation piano works found on The Harp of New Albion. Instead, Riley creates a dense fog of improvised keyboard that is difficult to penetrate.
The name of the piece, Aleph, represents a beginning and bringing together concepts from Judaism, mathematics and even connects to the alap of a raga (something close to Riley’s heart). This heady mix of connotations is represented in Riley’s music with its suggestions of infinity and almost religious tenacity of his playing. The first disc in particular howls and skronks along to the point where I feel the need to stop it. It is hard work, especially so due to the settings on the Korg that he is using. Somewhere between a saxophone and one of those cheap toy Casios we all had as children, it grates on the ear more often than not. Towards the end of the first disc, Riley sounds like a traffic jam as the different notes sound like angry blasts of car horns rather than the hypnotic cycles that I would normally associate with his work.
The second disc fares better as Riley settles more into a more comfortable mode. The timbre is still an issue but he utilizes the sounds better than earlier in the work. He allows the notes to breathe and the just intonation scale becomes more apparent. Towards the end of the piece, his almost random playing suddenly morphs into a boogie-woogie rhythm and it feels like all the blood, sweat and tears of the previous hour has resolved into something not only familiar but actually pleasant to listen to.
As much as I look forward to new works by Riley, Aleph is marred by that awful synthesizer sound. I cannot help but feel that if Riley had performed this on the piano or even with a less grating setting on his Korg then it would be an awful lot better. Even a shorter edit of the performance would be preferable as the first part is a slog to get through. As it stands, Aleph is more of a curio than a canon release.
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