Description
Philip Glass built his reputation on restraint: repeating patterns, transparent harmonies, and changes so gradual they seem to arrive without you noticing. At its best, the music doesn't so much progress as accumulate. And somewhere in that accumulation, something hypnotic takes hold.
Façades comes from his score for Koyaanisqatsi, and the title says something about what he was after: the glass-and-steel faces of skyscrapers, all clean lines and reflected light, the city's surface in constant quiet motion. Long, unhurried melodies float above a simple accompaniment, and the saxophones lend the piece a warmth the original instrumentation doesn't quite have: something a little more human, a little more melancholy. This is music that asks nothing of you except patience, and rewards it slowly.
