Staff Picks: Pauline Oliveros - Accordion & Voice / The Wanderer
For fans of: Deep Listening
What they're saying: Ian Maxton at Spectrum Culture praises the depth and minimalism of Accordion & Voice: “The seemingly stationary music on Accordion & Voice requires the listener to focus in order to notice and respond to its underlying complexity. Each shift in focus rewards the listener because, even before she coined the term, Oliveros was making music well-suited to deep listening.” And in an AllMusic review of The Wanderer, Stephen Eddins nicely summarizes Oliveros’ approach to her instrument: “Oliveros uses the accordions' ability to sustain long tones to open the piece with an expansive modal landscape that evolves through slowly shifting textures and harmonies.”
What we say: Pauline Oliveros' work has often straddled the line between avant abstraction and personal mysticism. Using primarily accordion and voice, charged and purified by cavernous natural reverb, her large oeuvre sounds both experimental and profoundly ancient, deeply individual and like a transmission from another world. -jf