Andrew Poppy’s THE BEATING OF WINGS: 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION is released on False Walls in October 2026.
As noted in Paris-Move’s album review: “Andrew Poppy’s The Beating of Wings: 40th Anniversary Edition revisits a remarkable 1985 post-minimalist landmark, where orchestral music, electronics, repetition and pop collide with extraordinary precision and imagination. Originally released on ZTT Records in 1985, the album occupied an unusual position from the beginning: too adventurous to be conventional pop, too rhythmically immediate to sit comfortably within contemporary classical music, and too fascinated by the possibilities of recording technology to behave like a straightforward concert work. Forty years later, The Beating of Wings: 40th Anniversary Edition confirms just how remarkable that achievement was.”
As part of the announcements around the reissue, Andrew shared the following:
People often ask about influences and it’s never just one thing. It’s an anecdotal sport: spot the fingerprints. In some ways it’s not very helpful in experiencing the music. We all do it. Watching a movie finding yourself searching for the name of the actress that you’ve seen in something else rather than staying with the character and the narrative. Sometimes in a Prince song or Harrison Birtwistle orchestral piece I hear an echo of something else and search the memory bank for a clue. That’s just how the mind works.
It’s slightly different when you’re being asked about your own work because you know what music you’ve heard and loved, played or analysed. So when you spot a fingerprint you get self-conscious and that’s not what you want when you’re making something. You try to stay in the moment!
You can’t improve on those masterpieces. It’s best you forget them and let their inspiration propel you forward, sometimes into some kind of reverie. Not tripped out, it’s more focused than that. It’s only afterwards, years or decades afterwards, that I realised that the resonating piano and the arpeggiations in Cadenza were reminiscent of a Debussy piano piece I played as a piano student in the mid 70s. If I’d realised it at the time of writing the piece I may have lost the thread and not have written it. Curiously, when I confess an influence to someone, they look at me quizzically; they don’t hear it that way. So perhaps it doesn’t matter.
The pieces on The Beating of Wings were all written between 1980 and 1983, so well before they were taken into the studio. And the recording process changed them in subtle and not so subtle ways. Some of that is touched on in new writing in the new CD booklet.
Louis Andriessen said something like, ‘we make music about the music we love’. David Bowie sang, ‘I am a DJ, I am what I play’. If these guys are right then the titles below are on my list of loves. Things that inspired. A snapshot of listening between 1963 and 1983. Loosely mapped here to the four tracks on The Beating of Wings.
I’m very aware of how dominated by male composers and performers this list is. It would be nice to think the dial has moved on that out there. It has a bit, but not enough. My contemporary list of composers and songwriters would be more balanced. But there’s a long way to go.
One:
THE OBJECT IS A HUNGRY WOLF
Igor Stravinsky: Petrushka
Charles Mingus: Black Saint Sinner Lady
Steve Reich: Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ
Meredith Monk: Dolmen Music
The Crystals: Da Doo Ron Ron
Louis Andriessen: Hoketus
Frank Zappa: Little House I Used to Live In
The Beatles: A Day in the Life
Wendy Carlos: Switched on Bach
Luciano Berio: Sinfonia, with the Swingle Singers
Two:
32 FRAMES FOR ORCHESTRA
Kraftwerk: Autobahn
Thelonious Monk: Monk’s Dream
The Beatles: I Am the Walrus
Bela Bartok: Concerto for Orchestra, 3rd Piano Concerto
The Rolling Stones: Beggars Banquet, with Nicky Hopkins
György Ligeti: Atmospheres
Gavin Bryars: Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet
George Gershwin: Three Preludes
Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet opus 135 Lento assai, cantabile e tranquillo
Charles Ives: Housatonic at Stockbridge
Three:
LISTENING IN
Jimi Hendrix: Manic Depression and everything else
Miles Davis: Jack Johnson
Cream: Sitting on Top of The World live at Fillmore Auditorium
Steve Reich: Drumming
Fela Kuti: Upside Down
Edgard Varèse: Ionisation
George Antheil: Ballet Mécanique
Karlheinz Stockhausen: Kreuzspiel and Kurzwellen
Pierre Henry: Variations for a Door and a Sigh
Holger Czukay: On the Way to the Peak of Normal
Four:
CADENZA
Claude Debussy: Reflets dans l’eau
Philip Glass: Music in Fifths
Terry Riley: In C and A Rainbow in Curved Air
Steve Reich: Piano Phase
John Cage: In a Landscape
Conlon Nancarrow: Study for Player Piano no 21 (Canon X)
