Reverberations: Tape & Electronic Music 1961-1970 cover

Reverberations: Tape & Electronic Music 1961-1970

Recorded
1961-1970
Released

This 12-CD set documents Oliveros’ earliest years working in the realm of electronics and tape, when those mediums were quite new and the field seemed wide open. It begins with a piece done in her home studio, and continues with work created at the San Francisco Tape Music Center, the University of Toronto, Mills College, and the UC San Diego Electronic Music Studio. The pings and swoops, bursts of static and sudden lurches from one speaker to another both put this music in the same lineage as Xenakis and others working in various academic situations at the time (because nobody else could afford the wildly expensive, room-filling equipment) but also prefigure noisicians like Merzbow and even the digital glitches of Oval. But Oliveros had a lightheartedness that some — okay, lots — of her peers lacked, and that shows up in track titles like “The Day I Disconnected the Erase Head and Forgot to Reconnect It” and “A Little Noise in the System.”

Phil Freeman

Recommended by

Suggestions
Live in Vilnius cover

Live in Vilnius

David S. Ware Quartet
Birth & Rebirth cover

Birth & Rebirth

Max Roach, Anthony Braxton
Centralia cover

Centralia

Mountains
New War cover

New War

New War
Ming cover

Ming

David Murray Octet
Punk Authority cover

Punk Authority

Pete Swanson
Fire Illuminations cover

Fire Illuminations

Wadada Leo Smith, Orange Wave Electric
Anthony Braxton cover

Anthony Braxton

Anthony Braxton
Life Metal cover

Life Metal

Sunn O)))
Hole cover

Hole

Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel
The Owner of the River Bank cover

The Owner of the River Bank

Cecil Taylor, Italian Instabile Orchestra