Terry Riley – Persian Surgery Dervishes – 2LP

Aguirre Records

Californian composer Terry Riley’s “In C”, first issued on vinyl in 1968, is widely acknowledged as a Minimalist landmark that altered the course of twentieth-century music. His influential album “A Rainbow In Curved Air”, which appeared the following year, is a vivid fusion of rock and raga, jazz and psychedelia realised through overdubbing on an 8-track machine which had recently been installed at the studios of Columbia Records.

Echoes of Terry Riley’s inspired music have spread far and wide – into progressive rock, New Age and ambient soundings, film soundtracks, blissed-out electronica and dance-floor trance. His fluent and hypnotic keyboard playing can be heard as part of a continuum, transmitting energies from ancient and distant musical sources into the living here and now. “Persian Surgery Dervishes” is a significant part of that picture, a mesmerising record of a vital stage in Riley’s ongoing quest for connection with the universal mind and the sublime music that flows ceaselessly from it.