Angel Tears in Sunlight cover

Angel Tears in Sunlight

Released

The context of this record is heartbreaking. In 2020 Pauline Anna Strom, at the age of 74, had just completed her first new collection of music in over 30 years — thanks to RVNG Intl. finding a receptive audience by compiling her rare and beautiful new age recordings from the 1980s — when she suddenly died. However it’s hard to feel sad while listening to this album, released posthumously the following year. Despite the passing decades and technological leap from analogue synths to all-digital setup, it’s like she picked up just where she left off with cosmic explorations of endless delight and benevolence. As in all her work, there’s a fascinating contrast between Strom’s natural compositional richness — with narratives unfolding through tracks — with a sense of infinite patience and delight in the moment, which lets you feel like you could float there in bliss for ever. We’re in the territory of early Tangerine Dream, of The Orb at their most cosmic and least foolish, of Pete Namlook, of Steve Hillage‘s Rainbow Dome Musick — and easily matching any of those for sheer beauty - but really this is, as Strom’s dream of being “trans-millennial” suggests, music way outside of space and time.

Joe Muggs

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