Limited Edition Deluxe 4CD Box Set bringing together the seminal Columbia recordings of Terry Riley.
A deluxe 4-CD box set bringing together the seminal Columbia recordings of Terry Riley. A landmark reissue from one of the most pivotal figures in 20th-century music. The Columbia Recordings brings together the four seminal albums that Terry Riley created for Columbia Masterworks between 1968 and 1980—a body of work that redefined the possibilities of minimalism, electronic music, and compositional freedom.
The deluxe 4CD box set includes In C (1968), A Rainbow in Curved Air (1969), Church of Anthrax (1971, with John Cale), and Shri Camel (1980). Each title marks a critical moment not only in Riley’s evolution but in the wider cultural shift of American music: where avant-garde practice collided with high-fidelity production, and radical sonic ideas met mass distribution. Lovingly remastered and presented with extensive archival material—including rare photographs from Columbia’s storied 30th Street Studios and a 50-page booklet featuring essays by David Behrman, Thomas M. Welsh, and others—this box set captures Riley at his most transformative, when the pulse of innovation was inseparable from spiritual and sonic exploration.
In C alone marked a revolution, influencing contemporaries like Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and La Monte Young, while A Rainbow in Curved Air pointed the way toward ambient, psychedelia, and proto-electronica. Church of Anthrax opened new dialogues between experimentalism and rock, and Shri Camel explored Indian tuning systems through digital delay, yielding one of Riley’s most refined long-form works.
Released as Riley approaches his 90th birthday, The Columbia Recordings is not just a retrospective, but a celebration of music’s power to build new worlds—and to change the one we live in.
