Full of depth and often based on observations, these tracks express something not yet known. By inventing a language, imitating field-recordings, or pursuing the idea of visual works with sound, their makers generate colorful, elegant, and light settings, often realized at home.
38 minutes with Buffy Sainte-Marie, Gazelle Twin & NYX, Glynis Jones, Valentina Goncharova and others.
Featured cover art: Maria Teresa Luciani – Sounds of the City
Listen also to
Shaping Intermedia Art – Avantgarde Women (1968-85)
Playlist ‘She Told Me’
Glynis Jones – Schlum Rooli
the composer begins to explore the borderland of service and art in 1973 when joining the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in order to supply sound effects for the broadcaster’s programs (1975, BBC Records And Tapes / Re: The Grey Area)
Louise Huebner – The Emotional Bondage Spell
Los Angeles County’s Official Witch intones her conjuring skills with the support of Louis and Bebe Barron, composers of the first entirely electronic film score for Forbidden Planet (1969, Warner Bros. – Seven Arts Records)
Buffy Sainte-Marie – Poppies
blurring experimental music and folk with synthesizers on her album Illuminations, the Indigenous Canadian-American musician and visual artist became influential for both the gothic scene and proponents of 21st century New Weird America (1969, Vanguard)
Maria Teresa Luciani – Courtyards Citizens
imitating recorded sounds from Rome and Florence with her instruments, the Italian psychologist and musician comes up with scenic snapshots of city locations like supermarkets, public gardens and an airport (1972, Fama srl / Re: Finders Keepers Records)
Anna Homler / Steve Moshier – Gu She’ Na’ Di
the Los Angeles based performance artist sings in a language made up while crossing the desert in her car, accompanied by Steve Moshier’s sparse electronic sounds (1985, Pharmacia Poetica / Re: Rvng. Intl.)
Michele Mercure – The Intruder
the composer describes her album Eye Chant as a visual work with sound, about to create moods in the listener; it was recorded at home and got supported by grants from The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and The Painted Bride Art Center (1986, Quick Shower Music / Re: Freedom To Spend)
Gazelle Twin & NYX – Fire Leap
adaptation of the title that originally appeared in the 1973 British folk horror film The Wicker Man, turned into a pagan-inspired electronic-choral calling for a transcendental purge of post-truth Britain’s dizzying chaos (2020, NYX Collective Records)
Valentina Goncharova – Maitreya
born in Kyiv during the Soviet era and a student of the Leningrad conservatoire, the Estonian based violin player and electro acoustic experimentalist aims at finding new colors and rhythmic combinations when recording at home during the late Eighties; here she addresses the future Buddha Maitreya with a mesmerizing piece rooted in her curiosity for structureless music (1987-91, Shukai)
Ann Magnuson / John Cale – Helmut Newton Told Me
with laconic humor, the US-American performance artist’s homage to John Cage impersonates the cadence of his prose when she’s reporting about her time with Helmut Newton; the piece is embedded in atmospheric sounds by John Cale and was realized for the Venice Biennale in 1993 (1993, Cramps Records)
Doris Norton – Caution Radiation Norton
having always trusted in the benefits of solitude and that being alone means freedom, the Italian musician embraces personal computers as a tool for musical creativity from the beginning; no wonder that her album Personal Computer features the Apple logo prominently on its sleeve (1984, Durium / Re: Mannequin)