Schlingen-Blangen for Organ [Import]

Except that's NOT all, by any means. Palestine is a master in the art of listening. His music is dedicated to an intense act of concentrating on the moiré of overtones in a simple structure and manipulating this in real time. It has transcendental results. Rhythms emerge; soft, Reich-like, out of the play of different wavelengths. Shifts across different tonal metrics cause hallucinatory effects. Now, the music appears to be going backward - or, now, to have been processed through electronic effects. But it hasn't. All there is is the chord, the stops moving, and the listening.

Palestine's music tries to induce the sacred through minimum means. This makes it sound forbiddingly esoteric, but it isn't. There is an almost commercial ear for resolution. Thus, 21 minutes in, Palestine makes manifest the basstone that's been constantly implied - the one that's playing in your head; and the effect is revelatory.

Palestine is a kind of punk minimalist with no pretensions and no interest in selling records. His music, which appears to have been won at the expense of some suffering and poverty, has enormous purity and rigour. At the same time his spirituality, which totally informs his work, is completely grounded, honest, and rooted in the everyday search, found in some religions and spiritual practices (the sensible ones), for a simple, renewing, but elusive transcendental experience; the sort that brings you to a still, transformative point where peace and absolute raptness co-exist. Sure enough, when this music hits its mark (which is often) your heart beats faster, hairs stand up, things make sense - and the white rush of the new passes across you.

Lost in the increasingly watered-down world of the Glass/Reich/Adams holy trinity of minimalism is the pure, visceral, stripped-down music of Charlemagne Palestine. The few recordings of his works are almost impossible to track down. Luckily, there is this CD release from the realatively well-distributed New World label. Get it before it also ends up on the "out of print" roster.

Listening to the simple eloquence and uncanny spiritual depth of this music is a somewhat sad reminder of what minimalism really was meant to be before becoming the bloated, excessive, sentimental stuff that is is today. Palestine is a true American original whose music needs wider recognition and representation. Hear him.