Steve Reich is a pioneering American composer who fundamentally shaped minimal and process-based music from the mid-1960s onward. His innovative approach centers on repetitive figures, slow harmonic progressions, and intricate canons—techniques designed to make compositional processes audible to listeners. Reich's groundbreaking phase-shifting method, where identical phrases gradually drift in and out of sync, creates mesmerizing polyrhythmic patterns that have influenced generations of electronic and experimental musicians.
Reich's conceptual framework, articulated in his essay "Music as a Gradual Process," prioritizes perceptible transformation over traditional narrative structure. His minimalist aesthetic and process-driven compositions have resonated deeply within electronic music production, inspiring countless producers working in ambient, techno, and experimental electronic genres who embrace similar principles of repetition, gradual evolution, and mathematical precision.
