Erik Hall

Chicago-born and Michigan-based, Erik Hall is known as a multi-instrumental pillar for the groups NOMO, Wild Belle, and his own songwriting moniker In Tall Buildings. He has composed music for feature films, and as a producer/engineer he has shaped records for Natalie Bergman and Western Vinyl labelmates Lean Year. In a 2020 creative pivot, he chose to reinvent composer Steve Reich’s monumental contemporary classical masterpiece Music for 18 Musicians as a solo undertaking, applying the piece’s score to the familiar keyboards, guitars, and synthesizers in his studio. “At the time I think I was working through my identity as a musician and an artist,” Hall explains, “and on a level there was some sort of exorcism of a long held pop spirit.” The album was celebrated for being “freshly thrilling” and “legible in history but assertive of the moment” (Pitchfork) and “beguiling, meditational, and magical” (Electronic Sound). It won the 2021 Libera Award for Best Classical Record, and it quickly joined the canon of the piece’s quintessential recordings.

Selected Press

Shrewd... prismatic... organic...Makes a minimalist standard freshly thrilling to revisit.

  • Pitchfork
  • It’s amazing to hear the power of multi-tracking instruments like this. It strikes me that there’s so much potential in working with multi-tracked recordings like this, discovering aspects of the compositions that sometimes sound even better than the original.”

  • Bandcamp
  • Erik Hall...has made something thrilling and beautiful out of parts so complicated... I think Mr. Reich will approve.

  • Pop Matters