Polica And Stargaze Bruise Blood: Reimagining Steve Reich

Transgressive Records release Bruise Blood: Reimagining Steve Reich's ‘Music for Pieces of Wood’, a collaboration between Polica, an electronic pop band based in Minneapolis, and s t a r g a z e, a Berlin-based chamber orchestra interested in pop and electronics. The release sees them reinterpret Steve Reich’s 1973 composition Music For Pieces Of Wood. The first of a pair of records from this collaboration, this release sees them take minimalist pioneer Steve Reich’s Music For Pieces of Wood corrupting its polyrhythms across a continuous twenty minutes of music, pushing the boundaries of both artists in a truly engrossing and transportative collaboration. The second release in the series, to follow in September on Transgressive Records, is a more song-based album, containing new material and inspired versions of unexpected pop songs, turned inside out to expose their essence. s t a r g a z e is an ever-evolving project, marrying modern composition with alternative attitudes and sounds. Transgressive Records started working with André de Ridder, co-founder of s t a r g a z e, on his arrangement of Terry Riley’s In C Mali with Africa Express – a project that sets the precedent for this new release with its radical, yet perhaps definitive, performance of a minimalist classic. The first official s t a r g a z e release on Transgressive was a pioneering re-interpretation of the music of the alternative experimentalists Deerhoof Deerhoof Chamber Variations which led to the fulsome, and controversial takeover of the BBC Proms for the David Bowie night, which saw s t a r g a z e collaborate with artists as diverse of John Cale, Elf Kid, Mark Almond and Anna Calvi amongst others to celebrate the astounding, at times contradictory, music of this soulful, inspirational polymath. Poliça have themselves blazed a trail across the modern musical landscape – across their three albums of dark, personally political pop they have distorted the conventions of production and form to create deeply affecting songs that claw into your consciousness.