This recording might be Reich’s most intense. It’s certainly his most dramatic fusion of the hypnotic repetition of his 1960s and 70s work with deeper classical roots. It starts and ends with — and periodically returns to — the kind of relentless one-note pulse familiar from things like Music for 18 Musicians, New York Counterpoint and co. But in between arise orchestral and choral themes that go all the way back through Mahler, to baroque counterpoint, and even to medieval music. This pendulum between the programmatic and the hypnotic, the past and the endless present, can lead to some really strange mental states if you immerse fully.