Does anyone out there know Terry Riley’s amazing electronic toccata, A Rainbow in Curved Air? I strongly recommend downloading this piece (for only $1.98 at Amazon), if you haven’t already got it on disc. (If you’ve got it only on LP, download. It’s time.)

Forever, practically, Rainbow has been the diagnostic with which I test a newly hooked-up stereo system. If everything’s working, the echoing bong in the bass that sounds within the first minute (at :57, to be exact) seems to bounce between the speakers like a laser frisbee. Meanwhile, two upper registers are furiously busy with what slowly emerges as a chorale. Over time, the wilder runs have come to sound the most baroque. It’s as though you were catching Dietrich Buxtehude fooling around when he thought everyone was out at the Lübeck class picnic. And those bongos at the end, man!

I had already heard this piece, which is occasionally quite hushed, on every known variety of “personal stereo,” but only the Nano does it justice. Must be something about no-moving-parts.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
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