luphoria
Erik Hall is honestly making me seriously re-evaluate my stance on Reich's works... I don't what it is, but something about his sound brings out the shimmering textures and kaleidoscopic sonorities here in a way other records don't. Absolutely worth a listen.
zhangtastic
A cinematic soundtrack done by a talented multi-instrumentalist. No sequencers apparently! These loops sound like you're flying high in the sky.
Favorite track: Music for a Large Ensemble (Steve Reich).
The Tonearm
"It's a delicate recipe for success—the way the music translates to my own set of instruments here in my space. It has to be the right combination of paying respect to the work and taking it somewhere I find interesting and new, while maintaining that musical and emotional behavior and sentiment."
Max Herzog
He did it again! So good. The last few minutes of the Reich piece make me want to stand up and yell victoriously.
Favorite track: Music for a Large Ensemble (Steve Reich).
adam
Thank you for this beautiful music. The whole series has been wonderful. I’m only bummed that this is (afaik) the last one in the series.
Favorite track: Strumming Music (Charlemagne Palestine).
Micro Landscape of a Bathroom Sink
Thank you very much Erik. Who would have guessed to find an album that offers performances of both Glenn Branca and Steve Reich. It sounds so natural.
There is a certain solace to be found in minimal music—a contemplative joy that emerges through sustained repetition and subtle variation. Solo Three, the slyly absorbing new album from Michigan-based composer and multi-instrumentalist Erik Hall, embodies that hypnotic charge while boldly reimagining a distinct selection of contemporary classical works.
Hall’s affinity for minimalism began decades ago, when as a jazz-studies drummer at the University of Michigan he first encountered Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians. The piece altered his trajectory completely. Years later, amid a creative lull, he revisited that formative work by attempting a solo reconstruction. Working alone in his home studio, Hall painstakingly recreated Reich’s intricate, interlocking architecture—supplanting the piece’s orchestral palette with his own keyboards, guitars, and synths—and performing every part himself without loops, programming, or sequencers.
That recording, released on Western Vinyl in 2020, arrived during the fraught early months of lockdown and resonated deeply with listeners. Pitchfork praised it for making “a minimalist standard freshly thrilling to revisit,” and it won the 2021 Libera Award for Best Classical Record. Even Reich himself wrote to congratulate Hall, saying he had “reinvented the piece.”
Heartened, Hall next turned to Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato, a sprawling work of Dutch minimalism built on repetition and euphoric harmony. His 2023 interpretation was hailed by Bandcamp Daily as “mesmerizing as patterns emerge, coalesce, and retreat,” and the New York Times highlighted Hall in a feature on ten Holt’s growing influence. The project led to a years-long collaboration with New York’s Metropolis Ensemble and Sandbox Percussion, confirming Hall’s place as an inventive new voice bridging classical and contemporary practice.
With Solo Three, Hall brings this trilogy to a sweeping close. Instead of focusing on a single composition, he weaves together multiple works by several visionary composers: Glenn Branca, Charlemagne Palestine, Laurie Spiegel, and a return to Steve Reich. The result is a rich, varied homage to American minimalism—at once reverent and exploratory. Branca’s “The Temple of Venus Pt. 1” unfolds in oscillating organ and prepared piano; Palestine’s “Strumming Music” becomes a meditative blur of felted piano and guitar; Spiegel’s “A Folk Study” is recast with acoustic warmth in lieu of electronics; and Reich’s “Music for a Large Ensemble” closes the album with a 16-minute, kaleidoscopic rush of overlapping melodies and jubilant rhythmic patterns.
True to his method, Hall performs and records every part himself, layering instruments one by one like sonic bricks. The approach is deeply human and quietly defiant in an age of faceless automation. “It’s just so much more compelling to actually play every note,” Hall says. “Those micro-differences between takes create a sort of living, breathing magic.”
That living, breathing magic fills every corner of Solo Three. It’s both a reverent ode to the composers who shaped Hall’s musical identity and a vivid reminder that minimalism’s hypnotic beauty—its patience, precision, and quiet emotional power—still speaks urgently to the present moment.
- Zach Schonfeld
credits
released January 23, 2026
Performed, recorded, and mixed by Erik Hall at home in Galien, Michigan, Fall 2024, using a Yamaha spinet piano, Hammond M-101 organ, Rhodes electric piano, Moog Sub 37 synthesizer, Nord Lead synthesizer, electric guitar, and electric bass
Mastered by Warren Defever at Third Man Mastering, Detroit, MI
Artwork and layout by Aaron Lowell Denton
Thank you as always to Brian Sampson, Geo Corona, Warren Defever, and Aaron Lowell Denton. Also to Zach Schonfeld, Steve Carr / Carr Amps, Justin Walter, Elijah McLaughlin, and Catie Huggins at the Northwestern University McCormick Library of Special Collections.
this album is the justification for the hundreds of hours this year alone i have put into listening to albums. this record has so much versatility, it could be very legitimately used as background noise, or it could be a full-blown story that takes you down many winding paths of tension and emotion. the only difference between these two scenarios is whatever you wanted this album to be. if you havent already, please let this be the reason that you check this album out :3 kaycs
steady grooves with the sax of josh johnson dancing all over it. and when he takes a break, jeff slides in with something interesting. anna is a rock keeping everything together. the drumming is just perfect. listening to this enhances my life... i work to this, i drive to this, and i play it in shared spaces. lee
I almost shouted "that was live?!?!?" when I heard the crowd applause at the end of Daves. I can't overstate how precise these guys are despite having no composed material. Everything is performed flawlessly yet the music is far from sterile or unimaginative. The band will often explore a groove, but the contours of that groove change as the band makes their way through it. Records don't often leave me struggling to come up with any analogues the way this one has. AOTY contender. yakuzadog14
These almost heartbreakingly gentle felted piano compositions have the delicacy and loveliness of slow-falling snow. Bandcamp New & Notable Apr 30, 2023
Minimal and emotionally evocative compositions for solo piano in the Ryuichi Sakamoto vein from Cincinnati's Tristan Eckerson. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 18, 2020
Space 1.8 came on as I was driving at night through the Iowa countryside and everything turned magical. This record has the same effect, it’s like putting sunglasses on and looking at the sky. Beautiful. secretpizza
