Jordan De La Sierra – Music For Gymnastics (Numero Group)
There’s kind of an unofficial rule that I don’t write about reissues on AGB (for too many reasons to go into here) but this record is a perfect example of why that’s not an official rule. Jordan De La Sierra should be spoken about in the same breath as Terry Riley, La Monte Young, and Lubomyr Melnyk, but he only put out two records (in ’77 and ’88), so he was destined to fade into obscurity under the New Age revolution. I never heard of De La Sierra before this Numero reissue of the original 2xLP, and that’s just a fucking travesty. This music is absolutely stellar, 100 transformative minutes spread out over 4 soft piano pieces, looped melodies creating meditative rhythms, slow ambient keys soloed out and resonating in your soul, nothing but harmony and sober trances, the delicacies of hypnotic piano ambience laid out in the most masterful and endearing way, everything about this says “fucking classic” and hopefully Numero has been the catalyst for that. And since this is a bigger label, no song download from me, but that “Music For Gymnastics” link up there goes to a Soundcloud stream of the full 24 minute song, so dive in, then throw your money at Numero.