Lumping Charlemagne Palestine in with the minimalists has always seemed rather foolish. There's the name, first of all, as maximalist as one could get. There are the dozens of teddy bears and other colorful, stuffed animals strewn around his piano or organ and the cognac glasses atop them. Then there's the music.

This is a re-release of a double LP issued by the Sonnabend Gallery in 1974, right at the beginning of, arguably, Palestine's most powerful period. Two works for electronics bracket two for piano (the recently available B�sendorfer variety, with added lower keys). They bear similar, LaMonte Yong-esque titles: "Two Perfect Fifths, A Major Third Apart, Reinforced Twice" and "Three Perfect Fifths, A Major Second Apart, Reinforced Twice". These are drone pieces with an organ-y feel, static at first blush but revealing immense complexity on closer listening. They are stationary in one respect � they sit like liquid in a cup, but liquid that's been stirred, the resultant swirls endlessly fascinating. In the second work especially, small knots begin to appear in the silky strands as the inherent overtones and subtle dissonances start to broach the limits of the human ear.

The piano music, with which Palestine truly made his mark in the mid 70s, operates essentially in the same conceptual zone, though the music that emerges can't help but be heard differently. The nature of the keyboard means that a rhythmic element will be present, something that imparts to the underlying drone-nature, sustain pedal often depressed, an enormous forward momentum. One hears some Reichian spareness in the second portion of "One + Two + Three Perfect Fifths, in the Rhythm 3 Against 2, for Piano" (Reich's "Six Pianos" springs to mind on occasion), but generally Palestine uses tonalities that connote older forms, madrigals for instance, lending the music a certain archaic air. The remaining piece, "Sliding Fifths for Piano", is probably the clearest antecedent to work like "Strumming Music", an extremely fluid quality having been attained, Palestine really sounding as though rapidly swimming through the notes, the slipperiness referred to in the title overtly manifesting; wonderful music.