Pauline Oliveros + Musiques Nouvelles ‎– Four Meditations / Sound Geometries

paulineoliveros

CD – Sub Rosa

The legendary Pauline Oliveros recently passed away and Four Meditations e Sound Geometries has been one of her last releases: two long suites, more than twenty minutes the first, almost twenty-six the second. The first is the result of research carried out between 1991 and 1995, the second dates to 2003. Both the compositions are recorded by Andy Robbins and played with Musiques Nouvelles, a Belgian band run by the cellist Jean-Paul Dessy. After an immediate listening, apparently the approach is based on the free improvisation and on the sounds of the acousmatic tradition. From the first track, a studio-performance, we highlight the moving and feisty breaks and the voice of Ione. The artists are requested to pay attention on listening “before playing”. Obviously, according to the free form tradition, “listening” means the whole inclusion of anything played and finding a space for any sound which is played. As a result, in the moment a sound is produced, the sound runs and somehow changes the space too. The three-dimensional core of this experimentation is even more clear in Sound Geometries, the most recent composition, divided into three sections: “Contemplative: Into the Dreaming”, “Travelling by Any Means: Walking, Running, Floating, Swimming, Flying” and “Arriving Anywhere, Nowhere, Somewhere”. The titles are also interpretative metaphors to run the musicians over the emotional passages and dispositions, having the goal of creating a different atmosphere according to any section. The sounds are captured in direct drive by the microphones Oliveros skillfully set in ten “geometrical patterns”, a set-up named Expanded Instrument System (EIS). This set-up was specifically created to move and transform the sound in the space with audio surround 5.1 techniques. Todor Todoroff was called to coordinate the electroacoustic and IT expressions of this system, while Stephan Moore had the task to write some Max/MSP patches. The final result is amazing: in spite of her age, after a career literally made of sound, Oliveros kept the freshness and the coherence typical of her pioneering and epochal experimentation of the 60’s till the end.

 

Pauline Oliveros + Musiques Nouvelles ‎– Four Meditations / Sound Geometries