Artist	Song
Godspeed You Black Emperor!	The Gathering Storm
Radiohead	Treefingers
Miles Davis	Recollections
Arvo Pärt/Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, Paul Hillier, dir.	...Which was the son of...
Steve Reich/Tranquility Bass	Megamix
Igor Stravinsky/The Tallis Scholars	Bogoroditsie Dievo

Comment:

My father and I have a long history of appreciating difficult music together, from our joint discovery of Steve Reich to my introducing him to some of the Kronos Quartet’s more outré works. This mix, which is titled somewhat ironically inasmuch as most of the material is fairly mainstream though unusual listening, is a Christmas present for him. Notes:
Godspeed You Black Emperor!, The Gathering Storm...: This is the song that occasioned pulling the mix together. Guitars plus big orchestral swells, highly tonal, but at the same time kind of a maximum minimalist approach in its use of volume and color.
Radiohead, Treefingers: For my mother as well as my father. Both are fans of French composer and organist Olivier Messaien, from whom Radiohead shamelessly cribbed the tonal structure of this song.
Miles Davis, Recollections: Long proto-fusion blowing number from the Bitches Brew sessions.
Arvo Pärt (composer), Paul Hillier and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, ...Which was the son of...: Among the more difficult texts to set musically, this traces the descent of Jesus from Adam (and thence God). Second in textual difficulty only to the Declaration of Independence as a choral work. Which I’ve heard done, but that was in another country...
Steve Reich (composer), Tranquility Bass, Megamix: In just under ten minutes, Tranquility Bass remix all Reich’s most popular works into one big song. Reich’s love of percussive drumming and isolated vocals holds the work together and it stands up quite well.
Igor Stravinsky (composer), The Tallis Scholars, Bogoroditsie Dievo: Atonal but deceptively simple chant-based choral work. Simple for the author of Rite of Spring, anyway.

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