“Sustain a tone or sound until any desire to change it disappears. When there is no longer any desire to change the tone or sound, then change it.” - from the score for “Horse Sings From Cloud”
Pauline Oliveros has been a figure of the classical and electronic avant-garde for decades. She champions "[deep listening->http://www.deeplistening.org/site]." Her careers as writer, composer and performer have been dedicated to the exploration of music as a psychosomatic means of expanding consciousness. She has embodied that belief through contributions to numerous experimental groups and universities dating back to the San Francisco Tape Center in the ‘60s (where she played in the premiere of Terry Riley’s In C for Instruments. Important has paid her a welcome tribute by reissuing two discs of her accordion-based material dating from the late 70’s and early 80’s.
Despite the liberal, un-ironic use of accordion by bands from The Arcade Fire to The Twilight Sad, in my mind the instrument still had the character of a dowdy polka prop before I heard these records. No more. Oliveros reveals the instrument’s capacity for scale and dignity in this handful of expansive original compositions, which range from the staunchly minimalist “Rattlesnake Mountain” to the modernist romp of “The Wanderer: Part II”.
Her music is a fine example of eschewing artifice as a means of arriving at richer art: the persistent, undulating mass of sound that she elicits from her accordion brings to mind the image of a raw sine wave – the simplest visual avatar of sound. But careful attention to the throbbing permutations of this mass reveals a robust, versatile, and shifting music that is at once inscrutable and engrossing. She capitalizes on ambient music’s binary ability: it can serve as a sort of matte aural wallpaper or an unadorned gateway to new ways of imagining. According to Oliveros’ commentary in the liner notes, “Horse Sings From Cloud” is intended to function as a meditative agent wherein the respirations of player and instrument respond to and align with each other. From someone else, this could seem like so much neo-Buddhist posturing, but the quality of Oliveros’ work and the intensity of her engagement with these ideas preclude such facile suspicions. It’s rare to find such an enriching fusion of concept, sound, and politics in the same musical moment. Don’t miss it.
