listening to philip glass's trilogy sonata and yeah, glass is just art rock without the rock. or the art

the only people who talk about the way minimalism (or stravinsky, film music, etc) uses musical materials to obtain nonconsensual kinetic responses & the similarity this has to capitalism & its effect on social interactions seem to be liberal fascists like taruskin, but it's true

to clarify: restricting musical materials to a very limited set of materials and then using tension and release to get enjoyment = an analogue to capitalist society restricting us to a very limited set of social mores and then using tension and release to make us think we like it

but arguably, the first one is what *all* musicians do (provided the music recognises the psychological mechanisms of tension and release in the first place—which not all music does to be sure, but a lot of minimalists' work is built on it—glass, adams, feldman, reich,)

(also among the work of non-minimalists, beethoven comes to mind as a supreme manipulator by drawing out dissonances and tension for long enough that it becomes exhilarating. but you also feel manipulated as hell if you can spot the joins)