Harold Budd finally agreed to breakfast. The minimalist composer had been receiving letters from someone named Ruben Garcia insisting that they meet; Garcia thought that Repetition Repetition, his band with local L.A. guitarist Steve Caton, would interest Budd. He was right: When the three sat down at a Mexican place together, they hit it off immediately and went back to Garcia’s house to jam. Budd collaborated on a few tracks on the duo’s self-titled 1985 debut, plugging one reverb unit into another to make Garcia’s keyboard hover and glide. “They decided at some point that they were interested in art music, rather than dirty club rock’n’roll,” Budd said in a lecture at the time. “This is going to be difficult, but God help them, I think they’re great.”
Caton was into “dirty club rock’n’roll” having played in punk bands before hooking up with Tori Amos’ early new-wave group Y Kant Tori Read, but he dabbled in jazz and classical as well. Garcia, on the other hand, was fanatically single-minded. “Minimalism is my life,” he said, and meant it. The two found common ground in the work of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, which determined the direction of Repetition Repetition: Keyboard figures repeat ad infinitum, while spacious guitar lines swoop and soar. It’s a simple but effective formula that Garcia and Caton put to tape as soon as they began playing together. From 1984 to 1987, they produced the entirety of their discography—three cassettes and two compilation tracks. A selection of these rare songs make up Fit for Consequences, which showcases their brief but brilliant evolution.
The earliest track here is “Over & Over, Pt. 1,” originally from a 1984 compilation on L.A.’s obscure Trance Port Tapes, which introduces their modus operandi. Garcia’s synthesizer ostinatos create a dizzying, hypnotizing effect that is tempered by Caton’s understated, melancholic guitar washes. This sound wasn’t novel in the mid-’80s—Garcia knew that Terry Riley had gotten there long before, and was fine with that—but Repetition Repetition made it their own with a little lo-fi grit that separated them from capital-M Minimalism. “Apartment Life,” from the 1985 debut, is more pristine, with a gorgeous piano part that anchors chirping tape effects. But even in the song’s meditative drift, Caton’s sparse guitar work maintains a subtle tension. If they wore their influences on their sleeves, they at least had the good taste to tailor them to the underground.
After their first album, Repetition Repetition changed how they worked. Instead of playing together, Garcia would improvise solo in his home studio and then deliver the reels and the 4-track to Caton, who found roughly song-shaped sections to supplement with his own parts. Though the process was more impersonal, it gave each musician a chance to craft their contributions on their own time and on their own terms. “Lakeland” is the most obvious bit of Eno worship, clearly the work of Garcia, and Caton knows to sit back and just watch its gently rippling piano figures shimmer. On “The Men Are Fighting,” Caton takes charge with overdriven heavy-metal riffs while the keyboard sets a dark, brooding mood. Garcia provides the band’s only lyrics here, delivered in Spanish, describing the life of a machinist working in a factory so that he can continue to make art, “luchando por mi música”—fighting for his music.
Those lyrics were close to reality. Garcia and Caton fought hard for Repetition Repetition, sending demos to hundreds of record labels—if you can believe an early, irate press kit—before releasing these three strange cassettes themselves. They got a few gigs and a bit of local radio play, but not enough traction to keep going. Their professional trajectories diverged radically again after Repetition Repetition. Caton toured the world with Amos throughout the ’90s after she made it big with Little Earthquakes, while Garcia remained devoted to minimalism on a series of albums including the classic Music for 3 Pianos with Budd and Daniel Lentz. But for a few thrilling years, these two worlds merged to create something unplanned, unpredictable, and unrepeatable.
