DAVID GAMPER / PAULINE OLIVEROS
At The Ijsbreker Jan 24 1999
(JDK) Used CD $6.00
“The EIS is greatly in evidence on this … improvised live recording …[which recreates] the sounds of Oliveros’s accordion and Gamper’s piano and in a virtual acoustic space, distorting them as if … in a hall of mirrors. The lengthy ‘Breaking the EIS’ showcases a divergent sound menagerie: plaintive electronic yowls, scatterbrained pitter-patter, ghostly wavering and wailing. It’s mostly downcast and alien, but impressively grotesque. ‘Pauline’s Solo’ is more serene, but there’s a rippled depth to be heard in the laminated accordion drone, which recalls Penderecki’s chilly tautness. Whenever it seems [to be] subsiding into mere atmospherics, piercing flurries of shrapnel erupt and disrupt expectations. The two instruments work best together on ‘EIS Cream’, which sounds like … subterranean … cyborgs … mak[ing] a Windham Hill record, and where the flickering piano blends well with the dilated accordion tones.”