Electronic Works

Pauline Oliveros (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 31, 1998)
• Label: Cellar Door Records
• ASIN: B000006H60
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #609,738 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. I of IV (1966)

2. Big Mother Is Watching You (1966)

3. Bye Bye Butterfly (1965)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential listening, November 25, 2000

By 

Steve Benner "Stonegnome" (Lancaster, UK) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Electronic Works (Audio CD)

This disc contains some 70-odd minutes-worth of material from one of America's foremost pioneers of electronic music. It contains just three works, each dating from the mid-1960s. Although the equipment, as well as the techniques, utilised in the production of these works were relatively unsophisticated, the same cannot be said of the end product. The emotional depth that these pieces plumb is quite staggering. In all three, Pauline Oliveros demonstrates that her compositional technique has always been driven first and foremost by the sonic results of her experimentations: in other words, by her listening to what she produces. It is this concern for the way her music actually sounds that in my view sets this wonderful composer apart from so many of her (often better known or more fêted) contemporaries. And which ultimately will make her music last longer.

Something else which distinguishes these works from those of other electronic music composers of the time - especially those of European schools of composition - is that these are all recorded in real time, rather than consisting of sounds built by painstakingly spliced together bits of tape. Or by recording and rerecording, ad infinitum. The end product has an immediacy and vibrancy that other composers only rarely achieve. It also results in larger scale works, as well as works of a much higher sound quality. Contemporaneous works by Karlheinz Stockhausen, or Pierre Schaeffer (even in their 1970's remasterings) cannot hold a candle to the sound quality of these pieces. For its time, it is truly stunning.

Perhaps the best-known work here is "Bye Bye Butterfly". Consisting mostly of clicks and screaming oscillator whine, the inclusion of a chunk of recorded Puccini nevertheless manages to expose this work for what it really is: a short but powerful feminist statement. (Oliveros has always been a pioneer in much more than just musical composition!) "I of IV" uses super-heterodyning and a complex tape-delay set-up to weave a densely textured edifice, which has obvious resonances (pardon the pun) with the composer's oft-recounted tales of experimenting as a child with her grandfather's short wave radio set. But the real masterpiece on this disc is "Big Mother is Watching You". Using the same tape-delay set-up as "I of IV" but with real sound sources, rather than oscillators, this massive work is as solid a piece of musique concrète as any one could wish. And is as cleverly and daringly constructed as only Pauline Oliveros could achieve. Unreservedly recommended to anyone with an open ear and a mind to match.

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensible, January 31, 2007

By 

Anton Feichtmeir (Neither here nor there) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Electronic Works (Audio CD)

I first heard "I of IV" at the age of 9 when I found a record in my parents vintage record collection called "New Sounds in Electronic Music".I bought this CD specifically for that compositon."I of IV" is a totally amazing piece of music. It has a very "industrial" sound to it-the tones sound like the whirring of giant metal machines-like you're in some kind of factory or industrial plant.Ive read the description of how this composition was created but still.....its hard to imagine what she was actually doing as this was being recorded.Its so amazing that this was done WITHOUT synthesizers-the tones were generated using old fashioned 'Function Generators' so I can only try to imagine how she varied the pitch. The tape delay is what creates the resonant reverberation and the long, slow, fading of all the different sounds.

5.0 out of 5 stars Originally...., June 30, 2003

By 

Photoscribe "semi-renaissance man" (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Electronic Works (Audio CD)

I heard "I of IV" on a local college station and was immediately taken aback at how "comforting" it sounded: like a sonic interpretation of a warm breeze or air movements in a sauna bath! To this day, it is one of my favorite "new music/electronic" works. "I of IV" was originally on a Columbia imprint throughout the 70s and 80s called "Odyssey", which apparently, after the late nineties' shakeup that gave most of CBS' record division to Sony, has been stupid enough to let this title go. (Wouldn't you like to meet the so and so who engineered that whole business with Westinghouse?) To this day, it has a place in my collection as a great, relaxing piece of extended sonic relief.

Slap this baby in your cd or cassette player and lay back for some of the most soothing hard electronic music you'll ever hear.

You will indeed feel like you're in a "sonic sauna bath"!