If you ever have a chance to see a performance assembled by electronic innovator and legend Pauline Oliveros, do not miss it. Oliveros may have passed the 70-year mark, but she looked easily like a tough woman who just stepped off her motorcycle. In a small room at the Massachusetts College of Art, Oliveros surrounded herself with an electronic upright sensor-bass player, a steel drum player and laptop musician. Oliveros began the nearly hour-long set on her signature modified accordion, bending sound with every pump and sending random notes, twittering separately in all four speakers which were set up in the corners of the room. This wasn't my cup of tea, particularly as I'm not a big fan of jittery notes, which, while probably perfectly timed out, seemed completely random to me. However, as soon as the drones of the bass came in, all I could do was sit back with my chin on the floor going "fuuuuuck". Each musician had a collection of electronic gadgets by their side, including the steel drum player whose sounds shimmered and resonated with every strike. Pauline eventually put down the accordion and picked up a seashell. Blowing into and out of the seashell into the mic nearby, her breath sounds were mutated, looped, stacked, echoed, and then the shell was bowed with an unidentifiable object. The only musician I couldn't pick out had to be the guy on the computer, who I'm sure was contributing most of the sampled, twisted voices, but could have easily been mutating what some of the other players were doing. As the wall of sound swelled into a fantastic aural soup, Pauline put down the seashell and picked up what appeared to be eiher clam shells or mussle shells, all strung together in a net-like mesh. The sound they added to the mix was a marvelous tinkling ambience, which completed and complimented everything else superbly. By the end of the show, she had resorted back to accordion and the sound slowly faded into silence. Wow.
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