beginning. That's how the piece ends. It doesn't end with a lovely trip to the world to come, which of course all of us will experience at one time or other no matter what. It ends with the world right here. The world right here is still the world with emergency clangers going off as we speak." There are few musicians who are willing to speak to their audience on such an intuitive level. Throughout his career Reich has found success by not only achieving this, but reinventing the wheel in the process. Listening to him speak in an animated and accelerated fashion, he is worlds away from the soft-cotton-wearing fatherly figure sporting his signature weathered baseball cap. As he reaches his seventy-fifth birthday this month, Reich paints a commanding profile. An artist transfixed by the present. Unlike previous celebrations of his age, this year heavily features new and recent works. "There's been a lot of focus on what I have done right now," he stresses, "and that's the way I'd like to keep it." Words by Samuel Breen This article appears in the October issue of Clash Magazine, find out more about the issue and how to subscribe HERE .