Pauline Oliveros

Gonna have to get round some of her 'deep listening' stuff someday. Can anyone tell me what's the distinction between that and ambient as defined by eno et al (if any)?

she is having a deep listening retreat next week.

she sat next to me at a TFUL282 show about 6 years ago.

She's a total hippy as far as avant-garde composers are concerned.

While she's mostly known for the more meditative deep listening related pieces, she's composed some really cool more intense/rhythmic/minimalist type stuff, like on The Wanderer LP on Lovely Music, which is scored for an accordian marching band/symphony or something and rocks thoroughly.

The one that's most like the first is 'Ready Made Boomerang', same lineup, same 45-second water cistern reverb. That lineup also recorded 'Troglodyte's Delight' in a cave filled with waterdrops dripping into deep pools, and the way the acoustic instruments rise out of the sounds & gradually go electronic is definitely worth hearing.

Her solo recordings can be roughly grouped into two: the 60's electronic tape-music improvisations, and the later works for solo microtonal accordion.

The tape music pieces range from huge slabs of drone to wild oscillator freak-outs, all manipulated with multiple tape delay & decay systems running in parallel, to build & layer her sounds in real time. I'd start with 'Electronic Works' on Paradigm: 'I of IV', 'Big Mother Is Watching You' & 'Bye Bye Butterfly'. I also like 'Alien Bog / Beautiful Soop', more diffuse. I never got into 'No Mo' as much as the previous two, not that it's bad music.

Recent stuff replaces the oscillators with her specially designed microtonal accordion stuff, which she plays into a range of digital delays, recently Max/MSP. The accordion produces flurries, air sounds, and bizarre sustained drones. Microtonal music can be an acquired taste, these are not soothing drones, they are drones that wake you up.

My favorite record of hers is 'Roots of the Moment'. Solo accordion, live recording. Moves through the flurries to some queasy landscapes to finally arrive in the last twenty minutes at an incredible mammoth chord that's simultaneously rock solid and skittering all over the place. Not pretty like Palestine's 'Strumming Music' but if you like La Monte Young or 'Four Violins' you need this record.

I mean 'pretty' here in the light sense; 'Roots of the Moment' is an incredibly beautiful piece of music.

One more reference point for it's conclusion is James Tenney's 'Critical Band'.

& one last recommendation if you like 'Deep Listening': seek out Stuart Dempster's 'Underground Overlays From The Cistern Chapel', where he returns to the water cistern with 9 other trombone students following his lead, mirroring his notes. From the 'Deep Listening' record you can pretty much imagine what this one sounds like.

with Ellen Fullman. Not too big on that one as an album, though it sounds like it could have been a great concert. Ken's right, her music often loses a great deal in recorded form.

can't lose with these though:
Oliveros / Dempster / Panaiotis - Deep Listening
Deep Listening Band - Non Stop Flight
Oliveros - Roots of the Moment
Oliveros - Electronic Works

Her ideas about breaking down performer/composer/listener boundaries, about deep listening, about interaction between performers, about music as therapeutic process are all things I've found really valuable.

i think that piece of equipment is familiar. (nudging gygax!.)

m.

scroll down (the pic links don't work anymore):

New Buchla analogue synthesiser modules!!!!!!!

http://gnv.fdt.net/~christys/light/oliveros.html

(loud offscreen noise interrupts her, long pause)

Ashley: "that means you're telling the truth"

episode five

start there

finally listening to the new CD reissues of Accordion and Voice and The Wanderer -- happy that other labels are picking up the slack since Lovely doesn't seem as interested in reissuing some of their earlier albums, like Blue Gene Tyranny's Out of the Blue. the reissues are great -- these were her first full length solo albums I think? and notably all acoustic, no electronics at all, though the microtonal tuning on the accordions really give an edge. and the mini-gatefold covers are beautiful, the covers really make the albums

Accordion and Voice keeps things meditative & drony -- this heralds what she'd get up to later once she added real time electronic processing on Roots of the Moment, and sounds like what she brought to the group improv on Deep Listening. The Wanderer has uptempo ensemble works, a 23-strong accordion orchestra playing hopped up 7/8 swingtime minimalism, and there's a bonus track of her playing accordion with david tudor playing bandoneon -- also no electronics, and very pointilist / atonal, not droning, a few noisy outbursts. if you want to hear them improvise using electronics, there's the 17 minute noisy feedback sprawl "Applebox Double" from 1965 where she and Tudor rub and strike amplified wooden appleboxes with various household objects, it's on the ONCE Festival box set -- http://www.newworldrecords.org/album.cgi?rm=view&album_id=80567.

lots of new Oliveros CDs out, there's evidently a 30 minute bonus track on her reissue of Primordial Lift from the same sessions

& thanks to dleone for spotting the discs, man does a terrifying version of toto's "africa" I forget almost everything from kevy b's kareoke party after the cuervo was opened

If you haven't heard it yet, you should chase down the fairly recent HAT reissue of Roots of the Moment, too. A really fine record, perhaps the best of her with accordian.

New World is also reissuing the David Behrman produced Columbia LPs of early Cage and Feldman piano this month/next month. Super psyched about that. I feel bad for those who threw down the $43 dollars for just the Cage 2CD Sony-Japan edition after seeing it on the recent FE update when both sets are going to be available together for about $30/$35

is the HAT reissue different from the original HAT CD of Roots (besides adding track marks?)

yes! http://www.newworldrecords.org/album.cgi?rm=view&album_id=81273

I love New World, I recently heard a tape of that 1959 Feldman album and it's kind of ground zero

Actually, I wouldn't know if the Hat reissue is different. I only said that because it's what's available. I've got the original and I like it just fine, maybe better because I prefer the artwork on the old edition.

Is "ground zero" a good thing? Blue Gene does liners for the Cage/Feldman reissue.

I prefer the original packaging too

'ground zero' = the Feldman most people heard first. Feldman's 'Piece for Four Pianos' (where four pianists play the same score but choose their own tempo, staggering out the chords) is huge for me, and when I realized it was first released in 1959 it seemed like a missing piece of history because the way the piece sounds takes a certain precedent over the later Riley / Reich / Oliveros / Eno pieces that explore phasing & overlapping motives using tape loops. Riley's 'Music For The Gift' and Eno's 'Music for Airports' in particular are very much following up on 'Piece for Four Pianos'. so it's great to see that coming back into print.

aw

http://www.analogartsensemble.net/blog/oliveros_young.jpg

http://www.analogartsensemble.net/2007/07/pauline-oliveros-i-of-iv.html

:)

Ha what a great picture! I've actually been listening to her a lot lately, actually this piece and the Primordial Lift stuff. It's awesome! I'm eager to hear more of her work.

I missed a free deep listening workshop the other month cos I went to sleep. I am a fucking dope.

Her turntablism

I got Accordion Koto with Miya Masaoka while I was in SF...so good.

the new Sub Rosa compilation Four Electronic Pieces 1959-1966 is fantastic, especially the first two pieces. they are living beasts and ten mazes ahead.

I thought we'd heard the best of her 60's electronic music by now, but I was wrong, this one is just as sharp as Electronic Works. Alien Bog / Beautiful Soop, No Mo, & A Little Noise In The System are the other three releases of her 60's improvisations, unique and wonderful but in enough of a similar mode that I don't play them as often (though when I'm in the mood, 'A Little Noise In The System' is really enjoyably uncompromising & relentless, it's flat out noise but it's more about curiosity than a display of power)

But this new one! 'Mnemonics III' is basically an extra 18 minutes of the setup she used for 'Bye Bye Butterfly', but instead of the plunderphonic sample detour, the oscillators just keep stretching

a friend of mine is putting out a new record by her, please support his great label

http://roaratorio.com/

http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g273/Roaratorio/roar211.jpg

bump

i am super broke right now but wld v much like to buy that record, at some point, in the near future

title is so great

Oh noes, vinyl only?

i think his records come with download code

i like roaratorio! i will stock this album.

:)

yeah great label and just a fantastically nice dude too

ian i would highly recommend "rag" by george cartwright and davu seru, great local mpls free jazz rec he put out

fans of drone-y accordion compositions should peep this album by bosnian composer merima kljuco - this track is really unsettling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHCsmDxAAG0

I bought that Roaratorio release, I like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKaFeLQyVxY

Disc 1:
Pauline Oliveros Home Electronic Music Studio 1961
Time Perspectives

Disc 2:
San Francisco Tape Music Center 1964-1966
Mnemonics I
Mnemonics II
Mnemonics III

Disc 3:
San Francisco Tape Music Center 1964-1966
Mnemonics IV
Mnemonics V

Disc 4:
University Of Toronto Electronic Music Studio 1966
II Of IV
III Of IV
IV Of IV
V Of IV
III

Disc 5:
University Of Toronto Electronic Music Studio 1966
Team & Desecrations Improvisation
The Day I Disconnected The Erase Head And Forgot To Reconnect It
Jar Piece

Disc 6:
University Of Toronto Electronic Music Studio 1966
Another Big Mother
Fed Back 1
Fed Back 2

Disc 7
University Of Toronto Electronic Music Studio 1966
5000 Miles
Angel Fix

Disc 8:
University Of Toronto Electronic Music Studio 1966
Bottoms Up 1
Nite
Ringing The Mods 1 Heads
Ringing The Mods 2 Tails
Three Pieces I
Three Pieces II
Three Pieces III

Disc 9
Mills Tape Music Center 1966-1967
Big Slow Bog
Boone Bog

Disc 10
Mills Tape Music Center 1966-1967
Bog Bog
Mind Bog

Disc 11
Mills Tape Music Center 1966-1967
Mewsack

University Of California San Diego Electronic Music Studio 1967-1970
50-50 1 Heads
50=50 2 Tails

Disc 12
University Of California San Diego Electronic Music Studio 1967-1970
A Little Noise In The System
Red Horse Headache

sheesh

awes

Wanna box that set.

holy fucking shit.

Only semi-related, anyone heard that whole C.C. Hennix album the same label put out? Sample sounds good.

Damn

"A most important discovery and major influence on my work came in 1958. This discovery came with the aid of technology; I simply put a microphone in my window and recorded the sound environment until the tape ran off the reel. When I replayed the tape, I realized that although I had been listening carefully while I recorded, I had not heard all of the sounds on the tape."
The microphone did not selectively "listen" to sounds as she did, but rather documented the entire sonic environment. From that day on Oliveros decided to work toward refining and expanding her awareness of what she termed the total "sound field".

from the box's David Bernstein essay

yeah this box

I think the thing that really hits me most about it is how it's not only vintage, but all recorded in real time. Back in the 60's electronic music was still not really being conceived of by anyone, let alone 95% of its practitioners, as a medium for live performance. Audiences had no idea of how the sounds were realized, they just emerged intact on the tapes, and even the composers who you could imagine spending hours rocking out with an oscillator & reel to reel tape delay were hesitant to 'compose' any such pieces for performance, in the age of serialism everyone had to have everything meticulously scored out in advance.

So a 12CD box of pure uninterrupted live takes is kind of a revelation -- a couple of these pieces are perhaps a little tentative and there's a little bit of feeling around but the level of quality is so unbelievably high that these all do go down as early proof-of-concepts for electronic music as a live performance discipline.

Retail price is much much much higher than when you order it direct, but... still worth it

& yes as Owen said the 2 CDs worth of extra 'Bog' pieces from the Mills Tape Music Center, where she wires up the Buchla to engage in Frog & Insect concertos with the wildlife singing loudly in the pond outside the studio... those are particularly amazing (I think they're even deeper than Beautiful Soop/Alien Bog), but discs 2-4 with the early Mnemonics and all the alternate takes of the X of IV series are the ones I've been playing the most

Only semi-related, anyone heard that whole C.C. Hennix album the same label put out? Sample sounds good.

― nobody gives a shit about the githzerai (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Tuesday, April 17, 2012 6:17 AM

'electric harpsichord'? its one 25min piece, on the ominous discordant side of drone

Haven't cracked the Hennix just yet, only heard about her a couple weeks ago (?!)

ubu web has a 3hr long dutch radio broadcast of c.c. hennix that is def worth grabbing (when their servers get back up)

talked about here - Catherine Christer Hennix

That Hennix is wonderful

n e one ever attended pauline's "college"

http://deeplistening.org/site/content/certificate-program

an ex of mine did, she loved it. I don't remember much of her descriptions other than lying on the floor with her eyes closed listening to various things Oliveros would play them.

i took part in a full day programme with her when she was in glasgow a few years back. it involved waking up the body, learning how to walk slowly, learning how to sing slowly, walking and singing slowly (simultaneously) and, to be honest, it was.... really really beautiful. an amazing experience and she's an inspirational woman.

Only semi-related, anyone heard that whole C.C. Hennix album the same label put out? Sample sounds good.

― nobody gives a shit about the githzerai (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Tuesday, April 17, 2012 6:17 AM

I think he's asking about the new one, Chora(s)san Time-court Mirage: http://importantrecords.com/imprec/imprec354

I like it a lot; a long single piece very much in the vein of La Monte Young's "Map of 49's Dream", sharing the same sine wave major chord drone + sustained brass chords + alap vocal singing over the top. It's got slightly more forward motion than the Young piece. Doesn't come on as instantly as "49's Dream" or "Harpsichord" but if you like those two you definitely want this

o sweet, i want to hear that

here's the 3 hr radio thing - http://ubumexico.centro.org.mx/sound/hennix_cc/Hennix-CC_Dutch-National-Radio_2005.mp3

some pauline stuff there too - http://www.ubu.com/sound/oliveros.html

heads up bay area: http://musicnow.mills.edu/concert3.php

yeah! i will be there.

http://www.citypages.com/2012-12-26/arts/2012-artists-of-the-year/

See page 7.

http://monoskop.org/log/?p=6568

12 cd box set of "early and unreleased electronic work" anyone?

http://boomkat.com/cds/1046954-pauline-oliveros-reverberations-tape-electronic-music-1961-1970-reissue

(oh, was out in 2012, now repressed along with a couple of others - The Wanderer, Accordion and Voice)

She posts my favorite kitten and bunny videos on Facebook.

deep kittening

kitten cistern

hearing reports that Pauline Oliveros died on Thanksgiving :(

RIP Pauline ;_;

So happy I got to see her perform last year.

I did a deep listening workshop with her and then saw her perform around a decade ago. She was an amazing unique beauty. RIP.

she casually gave me incredible advice at key points in my development; knowledge just kind of came up out of her.

and she was more lucid and healthy looking every year I saw her, this just seems impossible & I wouldn't believe this news… if it weren't 2016

love

aw no. i've been following her on Facebook for a good while now and she has always been a treat. love her music and love her attentiveness to sound. RIP Pauline

yeah when she got into Second Life, her online presence really became a particularly surreal treat

https://monoskop.org/images/2/29/Oliveros_Pauline_Software_for_People_Collected_Writings_1963-80.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QHfOuRrJB8

:( RIP

hero

Ah jeez, RIP.

Her workshop and performance at Big Ears #1 were so important to me -- really changed my head, my perception of music, my perception of perception.

Oh, 2016. I can't even start to process this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMCTxkFwLHw

Saw her at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2008 - everyone sitting on the floor, tranquil beauty straight to the skull. RIP.

video for tonight = pauline's interview / increasingly invasive beauty makeover from robert ashley's 'music with roots in the aether'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuDG1ijMPiw&list=PLNOvB4KfnCVvYM1wHIKac_VOr6m371xA7&index=5

Listening to I of IV now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLSFRmmTTjo

I've been thinking today about her ideas and techniques and how they relate to feminism and traditional gender socialization. Namely, the idea that as a musician you should listen to the other musicians, or as a performer that you should be attentive to the audience.

:-(

RIP :/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJrJ4pNqDNc

RIP, she made some seriously powerful music.

the idea that as a musician you should listen to the other musicians, or as a performer that you should be attentive to the audience

not to diss Pauline but these are not her ideas, they are pretty fundamental tenets of group improvisation

RIP

https://frieze.com/article/pauline-oliveros-1932-2016

Pleasant piece.

Interesting radio programme on BBC Radio 4 tonight which was about 50% interviews with Pauline Oliveros - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b083n4sc

reissue alert (or first vinyl issue alert I guess): https://importantrecords.com/products/oliveros-dempster-panaiotis-deep-listening-band-2lp

I just discovered this album recently and found it completely absorbing.

yes, i love that one.

i nearly bought that today but the shippimng just made it too much. Hopefully copies will make it over here shortly.

That record is all time

And mortality sucks :(

xps that's my favorite release of hers by quite a ways, absolutely essential

I can't get enough of this at the moment (along with Radigue). The Deep Listening album is just stupendous and from there I'm tending to go straight to Stuart Dempster's solo stuff: In the Great Abbey of St. Clement and Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel. It's answering a need I can't quite define.