: REVERBERATIONS: TAPE & ELECTRONIC 1961-1970

Imprec352 Box Set Important Records | By Andrew Violette

Oliveros turned 80 (5/30) a week after this She moves to the San Francisco Tape Music release: 12 CDs, none released before (except Center, which she founded along with Sender Jar Piece), arranged in chronological order, from and . She tracks Mnemonics the archives of the Center for Contemporary 1-5. Unlike her contemporaries, she records Music at . That's 10 1/2 hours "improvised studio performances" in real-time of oscillators, wave generators and modular (quotes from program notes), on a collection of synths. There's nothing from the mature last post-WWII surplus equipment (warm sounding four decades and, unfortunately, her two mas- test signal oscillators), with little cutting and terpieces from this period, Bye Bye Butterfly and splicing. There's tape from multiple reel I of IV, are not included. Still, this much-needed to reel. ( uses this system, which he early improvised- puts her later calls The Time Lag Accumulator, i.e. routing the acoustic work in perspective. signal from each track on the tape to different playback recording heads, in his Mescalin Mix.) Time Perspectives , the one musique concrete Here, in Mnemonics, Oliveros uses what she work in the collection, is recorded on a Sears terms a heterodyne technique; that is she sets Roebuck Silver Tone at her the studio's twelve square-wave generators home. Her bathtub becomes a reverb chamber. to frequencies above the threshold of hear- Steel bowls, car curb scrapers, etc. are filtered ing. This produces lower audible combination through cardboard tubes and resonating tones. David Bernstein notes that she may be wooden apple crates. It's four channel with remembering "difference tones produced on each track recorded separately in real time. her accordion in the super-audio range" (quote The piece is created for the opening concert of from the CD notes). It all like the Krell Sonics, a series she organized with composer Music from the classy 50s sci-fi Forbidden Ramon Sender. Planet. There are rich drones, slow glissandi, low pulsating with complex delay effects. 22 | New Music Connoisseur She travels to the University of Toronto's course, there's Jar Piece, a collaboration with electronic music studio, where she studies multi-media artist Lynn Lonidier, who created a circuit building with composer and instrument light show for the work. Team and Desecration , maker Hugh Le Crane. Here she creates her I of another collaboration, this time with R. Murray IV series. It's a colder sound, the upper partials Schaeffer and Richar Robinson, I found charm- of which these ears found difficult to take. The less and formless. studio comes equipped with twelve sine-tone square-wave generators (11 tuned beyond Yet the layering of Bartokian night music's the range of human hearing) all connected electronic insect sounds of Three Pieces is lovely. to an organ keyboard. There are also two line Similarly, Angel Fix, with its voltage controlled amplifiers, a mixer, a Hammond spring-type modular synthesized waves hearkening back to reverb and two stereo tape recorders. "The the I of IV series, is beautifully crafted. screams of I of IV came out of texture magically and unbidden," Oliveros writes, "so unexpected The last CDs are Oliveros at the Mills Tape and delightful…a great moment of surrender Center with the Buchla . She to the process that I had set in motion." With continues the Bog Series with Boone Bog, long/ sustained sound piling up on itself by way of short pulses of cool, high whistles (transistors tape delay, who would have thought Oliveros rather than vacuum tubes), pianissimo glissandi was a pioneer of ? and her iconic insects; Big Slow Bog, with its long reverb of electronic bird, insect and frog (By the way, 1966 Tomorrow Never sounds; Big Bog and Mind Bog, with her own Knows uses Oliveros’s tape loop technique voice; and a hauntingly poignant mewsack, (though by way of Stockhausen's Gesang der with its recording of Stormy Weather, Oliveros's Junglinge). George Martin disables the erase voice and the Buchla. head of a tape recorder and lets the winding tape overdub itself to create the famed satura- The collection ends with 50-50 heads and 50- tion effect.) 50 tails (which is 50-50 heads backwards) as well as red horse headache and A Little Noise Her improvised indeterminacy with distortion in the System (which is surely an understate- and feedback reflects the mid-60s ment). In these pieces walls of noise pulsate noise group Theatre of Eternal Music (founded with complex sound-webs of Buchla and Moog by Oliveros's colleagues LaMonte Young, Marian Synthesizer feedback. These works perhaps Zazeela, John Cale and others). Oliveros antici- reflect what Takehisa Kosugi and Yasunao Tone pates No Wave composers Rhys Chatham and were doing at that time in their Automatism Glann Branca. (Could have written and Object . And surely Oliveros's work here 1968 Pendulum Music without her?) In turn she anticipates Elliott Sharp at his least compromis- was certainly influenced by Luigi Russolo's work ing – as well as the Japanese Noise Music of and may have been influenced by 's the 1980s. 1960 Cartridge Music, not to mention Nam June Paik's Fluxusobjekt of the same year (with its All this was not to last. hand controlled playback head). Benjamin Ethan Tinker writes, "By the early Oliveros is not for the weak of heart. 5000 1970s Oliveros's work was moving away from Miles, a two channel duet between pulsating the confines of the cave-like studio set up, and drone and rock-guitar feedback "melody", is ei- she seemed more engaged with resonance ther grating or invigorating, depending on your in the world around her." As Oliveros herself point of view. Similarly, Ringing the Mods 1 & 2, writes, "I prefer the contact of nice warm bod- ring modulator improv-ed (played forwards then ies to the cold isolation of the studio." Pauline backwards), is a high frequency version of the Oliveros would re-invent herself in another, then current James Tenney's Analogue 1 Noise more acoustic, direction, becoming the mature Study. In Oliveros's Night, I found the feedback Oliveros we know today. noise at the edge of human hearing extremely abrasive. Fed Back, an udulating dentist-drill Program notes for this massive undertaking drone, which had me crying "uncle," is only for are by Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender, Corey rabid fans of Ryoli Ikeda (who, by the way, also Arcangel, Alex Chechile, Benjamin Ethan Tinker, uses frequencies beyond the range of human and David Bernstein. Often anecdotal, they hearing). Bottoms Up, with its high frequency are elegantly crafted and extremely informa- noise and (merciful) silences, is willfully and tive. Embedded within are photos of Oliveros unapologetically harsh. The Day I Disconnected performing at The Mills College Concert Hall. the Erase Head and Forgot to Reconnect It and Also stunning is the design/layout and oscillator/ Another Big Mother (a sequel to Big Mother booklet photography by John Brien for IMPREC. is Watching You ), with their difference tones II and noise generators with tape delays, are (for me) masses of singularly ugly resonance. Of Spring/Summer 2012 | 23