Bang! This is essential listening for any Reich enthusiast. We kick off with an absolutely vibrant Six Pianos that makes you realise just how exciting all this must have been heard live back then. It is followed by a wonderful version of Pendulum Music, from 1968. That wonderful creaking effect from the swinging microphones could only have been imagined, one feels, by a musician with Reich’s attention to colour. Stephen Vitiello, The Kitchen’s archivist, hits the nail on the head when he writes of the work’s ‘dark energy’, whose resolution is yet peaceful. Violin Phase could almost seem an anticlimax afterwards but there’s something remarkable about this version for solo violinist (Shem Guibbory) and pre-recorded tape – it naturally has a palpably different atmosphere, even on disc, from the version for four violinists that The Kitchen’s audiences had been used to.

As if this were not enough, the disc finishes with an outstanding Music for Pieces of Wood and a Drumming that sounds perhaps more African than I have ever heard it, at least until the entry of the voice, when it suddenly transforms itself into a multi-mirror reflection of a jazz club. As I said at the beginning – Bang! Not only an essential recording for anyone interested in Reich but a hugely exciting, varied recital. The only thing I miss is the applause.