Steve Reich

Early Works documents Reich's initial forays into tape loops and phasing. That said, the mid-'60s piece "Come Out" is one of the most prescient pieces of avant-garde music from the subsequent 40 years. The composer took a news clip of a Harlem teenager explaining how New York police assaulted him and transformed it into a pulsating chunk of urban psychedelia. Remember: this was before Funkadelic, before On the Corner, before krautrock and long before hip-hop. The rest of the album is also cool.