Music In Twelve Parts
	Produced by Kurt Munkacsi and Michael Riesman
	Released on September 17, 1996
	no chart information
	Find it at GEMM
79324-2 box cover [high resolution scan]

I n 1996 a mysterious black monolith appeared, impenetrable save for the number 12 emblazoned on its back like some sinister butterfly stomper. One score ago a sculpture with the same name was let loose from the laboratory, smaller in form and soon bearing the fingerprints of Brian Eno (“Discreet Music”) and Klaus Schulze (“Decent Changes”), but that was only the offspring, this the mothership. Its arrival was precipitated by a literal misunderstanding, the kind of cosmic joke that masquerades as chance, and the original architect went back to work, building, building. At a distance, the fearsome three-disc set is a black hole beyond which lies a desert of the senses. But those adventurous souls who approach it find illuminating edges that reveal a mass of maddening and intoxicating shapes. I walked into it and was immersed in a bath of black atoms and electrons that sang of the creation of a new world, twelve angelic voices singing into being dna strands of eight and twelve, “an active, abundant, richy fertile stasis” (according to the printed Page) that evolved from single-cell organisms multiplying and morphing to a complex cosmos of constant motion. Pulling the Parts apart is illogical, perhaps even perilous, lest the whole monolith come crashing down on you like identical, stacked boxes. The intersection at 1 and 2, 4 and 5, demonstrate carefully crafted joints that hold the whole black ompus together. The first few sorties may be futile; mine were. I was enamored, then enervated, planted a flag at the peak of Part 5 and went home. But I went a little further every time and emerged at the other end aglow with the luminous vitality of this alien tonal landscape. In miniature, the man’s vision is circumscribed, but Music In Twelve Parts knocked me on my back, rolled the nightsky out above me and showed me new stars and constellations in a universe I’d only hardly tasted.

79324-2 picture sleeve	79324-2 back sleeve

TRACK LISTING

Disc One

1. PART 1    18:16
2. PART 2    19:18
3. PART 3    13:15
4. PART 4    17:18
5. PART 5 (BEGINNING)    4:26
   
   Disc Two
   
6. PART 5 (CONCLUSION)    18:47
7. PART 6    14:11
8. PART 7    19:59
9. PART 8    18:16
   
   Disc Three
   
10. PART 9    12:14
11. PART 10    17:09
12. PART 11    14:30
13. PART 12    18:19
    
    Music composed by Philip Glass

CREDITS

THE PHILIP GLASS ENSEMBLE:
LISA BIELAWA -- voice
JON GIBSON -- soprano saxophone, flute
PHILIP GLASS -- keyboards
MARTIN GOLDRAY -- keyboards
RICHARD PECK -- alto and tenor saxophones
MICHAEL RIESMAN -- keyboards, musical director, mixing
ANDREW STERMAN -- flute, soprano saxophone
Dante DeSole -- engineer
James Law -- engineer
John Gall -- design
Robert Mapplethorpe -- cover photograph

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