This late minimalist, 74-minute piece for orchestra and tape has had, and continues to have, a near-legendary effect on it's audience. It's the rare work created specifically to tug gently at one's heartstrings that actually does, and not subtly, either. It starts with a found recording of a homeless man singing a halting, simple melody looped over and over. Then Bryars builds and buttresses this with a full orchestra brought in incrementally, from the first carefully placed short pendulum string sweep to, 10 minutes from the end, the gravelly-voiced singer Tom Waits joins in. It's an obvious but effective work-appealing to all the basics of our emotional nervous system, but still tragically beautiful.
