STUART DEMPSTER / PAULINE OLIVEROS / PANAIOTIS
Deep Listening
(New Albion) Used CD $42.00
“Recorded in a massive underground cistern in Washington State with a 45-second reverberation time, the recordings are defined by a surreal smearing of [the] tones [of accordion, voice, conch shell, metal pieces, trombone, didjeridu, garden hose, whistling, and metal pipes]. Like much of Oliveros’s and Dempster’s work around this time, most of these improvisations … focus [on] extended drones, with Dempster’s trombone and didjeridu providing the backbone. Far from evoking any sort of stasis, these tones swell and resonate actively throughout the space, and the effect is hallucinatory. Melodic lines intertwine as they ripple and decay, and momentarily raised voices seemingly emerge from within the insistent, omnipresent root…. In a contemporary context, Deep Listening still sounds revolutionary. While drone, minimalism, and ambient music have proliferated in the intervening decades, few albums in those fields are as rich texturally and harmonically or have such clarity of vision. The album remains vital largely because it embodies Oliveros’s ideas, which have themselves resurfaced as a corrective to the sinister undercurrents of social and technological advancement.” From 1989. Manufactured at Disque Americ.