FEMINATRONIC INTRODUCES – PAULINE OLIVEROS

This is a new feature for Feminatronic where each month I will be highlighting the music of women who create and produce electronic music in all its’ forms.

This month, I thought that I would start with one of the giants in electronic music creation, development and innovation –

pauline oliveros

PAULINE OLIVEROS

As her website says:

PAULINE OLIVEROS is a senior figure in contemporary American music.  Her career spans fifty years of boundary dissolving music making.  In the ’50s she was part of a circle of iconoclastic composers, artists, poets gathered together in San Francisco. Recently awarded the John Cage award for 2012 from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, Oliveros is Distinguished Research Professor of Music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, and Darius Milhaud Artist-in-Residence at Mills College.  Oliveros has been as interested in finding new sounds as in finding new uses for old ones –her primary instrument is the accordion, an unexpected visitor perhaps to musical cutting edge, but one which she approaches in much the same way that a Zen musician might approach the Japanese shakuhachi.  Pauline Oliveros’ life as a composer, performer and humanitarian is about opening her own and others’ sensibilities to the universe and facets of sounds.  Since the 1960’s she has influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual.  Pauline Oliveros is the founder of “Deep Listening,”  which comes from her childhood fascination with sounds and from her works in concert music with composition, improvisation and electro-acoustics.  Pauline Oliveros describes Deep Listening as a way of listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing.  Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, of one’s own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep Listening is my life practice,” she explains, simply.  Oliveros is founder of Deep Listening Institute, formerly Pauline Oliveros Foundation.

 

deep listening

Album: Sanctuary (1995).The Deep Listening Band was founded in 1988 by Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster and Panaiotis. David Gamper replaced Panaiotis in 1990. The band is named after Oliveros’ term, concept, program and registered servicemark of the Deep Listening Institute, Ltd., Deep Listening, and specializes in performing and recording in resonant or reverberant spaces such as cathedrals and huge underground cisterns including the 2-million-US-gallon (7,600 m3) Fort Worden Cistern which has a 45 second reverberation time.

Lucy Claire ~ Collaborations No. 1

Although not technically electronic there is a use of electronics and processing to create Collaborations No 1 and so have reblogged this review – beautiful.

postrockcafe's avatara closer listen

coverWe were extremely impressed with Lucy Claire‘s last EP, Suite, and the follow-up EP, Collaborations No. 1, is equally impressive.  While the new EP contains two new tracks and three mixes, the variety makes the 27-minute set work well as an overall collection.

On Collaborations No. 1, the London pianist is joined not only by a string quartet, but by vocalist Alev Lenv and guitarist Bruised Skies.  The latter also contributes a remix, while other remixes come from Message to Bears and worriedaboutsatan.  These are not the acts one would expect to find among Claire’s friends, but their contributions demonstrate the breadth of her potential reach: beyond modern composition into the realms of ambient and electronic music.

The two main tracks – “Stille” and “Somnus” – are complementary opposites.  “Stille” is the more accessible track, the only overt lyric being the title.  Mournful strings are laid atop…

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SO! Amplifies: Eric Leonardson and World Listening Day 18 July 2014

Eric Leonardson's avatarSounding Out!

Document3SO! Amplifies. . .a highly-curated, rolling mini-post series by which we editors hip you to cultural makers and organizations doing work we really really dig.  You’re welcome!

On July 18, 2014 all are invited to participate, observe, engage, and celebrate ways of listening with care for our sonic environment in the annual World Listening Day. This year’s theme is “Listen to you!”  But first, listen to Eric Leonardson as he reveals the history of World Listening Day and more to kick off SO!’s third annual World Listening Month.

"Noisolation Headphones" by Flickr user Machine Project, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 “Noisolation Headphones” by Flickr user Machine Project, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Five years ago Dan Godston came up with the idea for World Listening Day, inspired by the pioneering work of the World Soundscape Project from the 1970s, and its founder, author, and composer R. Murray Schafer. With a group of Chicago-based sound artists and phonographers we started the World Listening Project

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Birds of a Feather: Final Flight

postrockcafe's avatara closer listen

Petit Kookaburra artWe’ve greatly enjoyed Flaming Pines’ Birds of a Feather series, which has just reached its conclusion with Philippe Petit‘s The Kookaburra and Kate Carr‘s The Kakapo.  Over the past few years, this series of CD3″s has brought us some of the most original work in the field.  Before this series was introduced, most field recording fans were used to hearing birdsong without attribution.  Birdsong had become (and continues to be) a trope in ambient music as well, but one seldom encounters species identification.  Birders might know what they’re hearing, but the untrained ear just hears birds.  This lack of clarity was underlined in a scandal a few years back when CBS Sports was busted for adding fake birdsong to its coverage of the Masters Tournament.  In the aftermath, the network learned that there is no such thing as generic birdsong.

The final two installments of Birds of…

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(Sound)Walking Through Smithfield Square in Dublin

Linda O'Keeffe's avatarSounding Out!

Sounds of the City forumEditor’s Note:  This month Sounding Out! is thrilled to bring you a collection of posts that will change the way you hear cities. The Sounds of the City series will prompt readers to think through ideas about urban space and sound. Are cities as noisy as we think they are? Why are cities described as “loud”? Who makes these decisions about nomenclature and why?

We kicked things off last week with my critical reading of sound in Lorraine Hansberry’sA Raisin in the Sun, a play about African Americans in Chicago that still rings/stings true today. Regular writer Regina Bradley will discuss the dichotomy of urban and suburban in the context of sound (noisy versus quiet, respectively),  and CFP winner Lilian Radovac will share with us a photoessay on the sound installation Megaphóne in Montreal.  Today, guest writer Linda O’ Keeffe takes readers on a soundwalk of Smithfield Square…

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WEB FOCUS – HERBEATS

HER BEATS

A BLOG ABOUT WOMEN IN ELECTRONIC MUSIC

As Her Beats states…

It all started with the Women in Electronic Music Last.FM group in 2008. A couple of years later we expanded to a FACEBOOK  page, and now we’re a blog! Hopefully we can add something a little extra to WEM at Her Beats, though posts will continue to cross over (more or less) between platforms.

Feminist Music Geek Presents … Spectrum

Alyx Vesey's avatarFeminist Music Geek

Leo Villareal - Big Bang

I returned to college radio late last month with my own show. Feminist Music Geek Presents… is currently in its third week. It honors women’s historical and contemporary musical contributions across genre. However, while I hope people are tuning in to WSUM on Friday nights at 9 p.m. to listen to the program, I wanted to give listeners the ability to stream my playlists afterwards. Here’s “Spectrum,” the first episode of FMG Presents… I’ll post a new episode each week.

Three things to note.

1. Each show focuses on a particular theme, which I explain at the beginning of the episode. Themes provide a useful organizational framework and allow me to put recording artists in dialogue with each other in a new context.

2. I’ll be excising WSUM-specific content (i.e., PSAs and underwriting) from the episodes, because community radio and digital streaming sites serve different entities.

3. As…

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Celebrating the eclecticism of Electronic Artists who identify as female