Three Tales

by

Steve Reich

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As I'm sure many have noticed, this seems to be the fruitful time to produce multlimedia works to do with technology and alienation. First, Glass and Reggio's Naqoyquatsi, and now 'Three Tales'. I'm sure many review-readers wonder, and a review below asked the question, so I'll answer it. Is this just a -qatsi rip off? Should one simply buy the Glass and skip the Reich? No. These are completely different works - both with seperate strenghts and weaknesses. While the -qatsi films - particularly Naqoyqatsi is dominated by larger than life visuals with the music providing an instrumental backdrop (albeit an active one), with this film, the impact of the music and the visual is about equal. Short answer: buy both if you want both, but the two are definitely not 'clones' of eachother.

Now for my obligatory disclosure. Out of the two discs in this set - one CD with the music alone, and one DVD with the entire music and visual combo, my four stars is entirely for THE LAST HALF OF THE DVD! That's only the last 'tale'. Yes, it is that good! For the first two 'tales' Reich sounds very much as he did in "The Cave" (and we all politely smiled at that one!). Though, I'll say that the music and visual go well together in all the tales, the music for the first two is not to my taste. Jumpy, bombastic, and jerky - and why does every dang chord have to be diminished?!?

Now to the third tale. "Dolly" pertains to the cloned sheep and the 'tale' has more to do with genomics and the prospect of artificial intellegence than with cloning per se. The music sees Reich returning back to his 'middle days' a la 'Sextet'. Here the music has a steady pulse and is primarily mallet percussion and piano. On top of this, we have short excerpts from interviews of scientists that Reich and Barot did. As one who is quite read on science I enjoyed seeing the likes of Jaron Lanier (pioneer of virtual reality), Richard Dawkins (who recieves brutal treatment, perhaps unjustly), Marvin Minsky, and Steven Pinker. As I am fairly read on science, I do feel that Reich took many of their quotes out of context (remember, we only see short excerpts) but not enough to subtract stars.

So as not to ramble, let's sum up. A.) this film is not a '-quatsi on the cheap'. The visual is completely different and is somewhat similar, albeit more high tech, than "The Cave". B.) I did not find the musical style of the first two 'tales' to my taste as they are a cross between 'The Cave', and 'City Life'. C.) The third movement alone is worth the price of this disc/DVD set, particularly if you are interested in science and its personalities.

Go get it.

Weeks before seeing Three Tales I heard its score. The music Reich composed for this opera is slightly less interesting than anything he has published previously. It features incessantly repeating syncopated phrases comprised of annoying melodies tossed upon stagnant, droning tones. This is the best that can be noted of the work. Mr. Reich uses Three Tales to expand his compositional methods into the modern age of the early 1990's. Time-stretched vocals are in every piece. A computerized voice (as that available standard on every Macintosh computer) sings several solos in the Dolly act. Uncomplicated, novice drum programming also hammers into numerous pieces - this is particularly disappointing as Mr. Reich is a competent percussionist himself. From onset to finish the score falls victim to a toybox of mundane digital audio gimmicks - perhaps impressive to the ignorant elite of la musique nouveau but thoroughly boring to anyone willing to acknowledge the radio music of the last two decades [see N'Sync's BT produced "Pop", Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle", Britney Spears' Neptunes produced "Slave", or anything produced for Madonna by William Orbit for far more progressive and successful attempts at integrating DSP (Digital Signal Processing) techniques into music]. Reich and his engineers should understand that these audio effects are not an end in and of themselves, and it shows little respect for the listener to try to pass these off as such.

The greater failing of Three Tales is the video component produced by Beryl Korot. I want to write only a few words on this piece as I have already spent more time on this review than a first grader with iMovie would require to reproduce Ms. Korot's cut and paste disaster. In my life I have watched my father slowly succumb to bone cancer, I see daily attrocities broadcast on the television news and the uncut footage on HBO or the internet. Yet, not for its content but for its design Ms. Korot's video for Three Tales is perhaps the worst thing ever to have struck mine eyes.