This almost exhaustive 12 CD time capsule of a boxset provides evidence of one such pioneer’s responses to the new possibilities afforded by the evolving technologies, while giving an in depth journey through the early history of electronic music, travelling progressively through several landmark technologies and five electronic music studios of the time.

Disc 1: Pauline Oliveros Home Electronic Music Studio

Before creating her first tape piece, Pauline Oliveros had been studying composition throughout the latter half of the fifties writing for horn, harp, wind, violin and piano but all the while feeling that the instruments were too limited to successfully transcribe the sounds in her head. Then, in 1961, ‘Time Perspectives’, the piece that opens this box set, was created for the inaugural ‘Sonics’ concert that also premiered the first tape pieces by Terry Riley, Ramon Sender and Phil Winsor at the San Francisco Conservatory where they all studied. It is very much the seed for all that follows being Oliveros’ first non-notated composition. Using the tape recorder her mother had bought for her several years previously, Oliveros set about recording four lengthy layers of home-made sounds that would be synced together at the concert on two stereo tape machines. But, not content with presenting a parade of improvised noises hewn from domestic life – the recording apparently features automobile curb scrapers, steel bowls, her partner’s laughter and dripping taps – the tape recorder itself is used to modulate the sounds through Oliveros altering the speed of the tape manually throughout the recording, while cardboard tubes help to filter some of the sounds and a bathtub adds some wet reverb. The result is a 20 minute piece of cartoon-like, denatured noises, a score for which would perhaps best be rendered through onomatopoeia as it whooshes, drips, springs, pops, whines, hisses, clangs and tinkles, often restlessly and in a manner that initially sounds random. However, amidst the cacophony individual sounds and their absences seem to deliberately coincide across the stereo image despite each speaker carrying its own distinctly different layers, suggesting some sort of plan preceding the chance operations.

Disc 2-3: San Francisco Tape Music Center

Much more exciting developments are explored over the next two disks that see the seed germinate into what would become the trunk from which all of Oliveros’ electronic branches would grow. Having pooled resources with colleagues Sender and Morton Subotnik to build the San Francisco Tape Music Center (SFTMC), Oliveros combined the tape delay systems developed throughout the ‘Sonics’ series of concerts (and made most famous by Terry Riley’s “Phantom Band” in the latter half of the sixties) with ultrasonic experiments she had been doing at the Center. But unlike Riley’s pieces that use more conventional modes and styles to be redistributed by the delay process, Oliveros was to explore the limits of the oscillators in free improvisation. The first results, all of which feature here, were titled ‘Mnemonics’, a series of five compositions derived from the audible consequences of manoeuvring ultrasonic frequencies and letting them spread, become saturated, or form rhythms through tape delay. The sound is the real time formation of the early stages of a new, purely electronic language as Oliveros improvises a universe of sonorities straight out of science fiction. Shimmering electronic tones extend, zap, glide and squeal – restlessly questing before dematerialising in a matrix of echoes – to remind of satellites and the space race that inspired so many imaginations at the time. Often the high pitched wail that permeates large sections of all five pieces feels uncomfortable, like staring into the sun, but the relief of contrast is always ‘round the corner as the tones suddenly scribble wildly then dive Earthwards to form deep, womb-like drones. Oliveros would go on to pour pre-recorded sounds into this system, using an LP of Puccini’s Madam Butterfly to create ‘Bye Bye Butterfly’, one of the few pieces from this era to have been released previously (and presumably why it’s not part of this collection), giving her additional stimuli to react to.

Disc 4-8: University of Toronto Electronic Music Studio

To seek further new experiences, this time beyond the homespun bubble of the SFTMC, Oliveros visited the University of Toronto to study with Hugh LeCaine in the summer of 1966. There she found an expanded set up so sympathetic to her ‘Mnemonics’ experiments that she was able to record almost half the contents of this box set in just six weeks. Indeed, six such pieces were recorded in a single day, one of which (‘I of IV’) became her first recorded release appearing alongside Richard Maxfield and Steve Reich on the compilation New Sounds in Electronic Music, released the following year as part of David Behrman’s Music of Our Time series on Columbia Records. Sadly this piece is missing from this collection being the most elegant output of that day (and quite probably the reason it was chosen for a contemporaneous release). With more elaborate equipment at Oliveros’ command, the outputs of this most productive period have more complex connotations than the ‘Mnemonics’ series’ sense of space. Here, more recent developments in noise are portended, like on ‘IV of IV’s concluding passages as wide washes of wailing electronics become almost consonant before petering out to form a stuttering shower, or the atonal shifting textures of ‘V of IV’s opening, filled with grumbling engine noise that turns to liquid before evaporating into a blasting electrical storm. Other pieces, like ‘Another Big Mother’ and ‘The Day I Disconnected the Erase Head and Forgot to Reconnect It’, are less frenetic excursions that take their time to explore smaller areas of this new, unchartered ocean of oscillations; the latter’s title indicating Oliveros’ defiantly anarchic attitude to the available technology. Despite this work still feeling wholly exploratory these were indications that further development may rein in the chaos enough to nurture a more structured style, but these were to be Oliveros’ final oscillator difference tone pieces.

Disc 9-11: Mills Tape Music Center

The following year the SFTMC accepted a grant to join Mills College that lead to the establishment of a new Mills Tape Music Center headed up by Oliveros and built with some of the latest technologies that crucially included the Buchla 100 synthesiser (commissioned by and developed for Sender and Subotnik who used it to produce his acclaimed recording, Silver Apples of the Moon). Optimised for live performance unlike most other synthesisers at the time that were more geared for studio engineering, it featured touch-sensitive plates that could be configured in various ways from triggering pre-programmed patches and patterns to modulating parameters such as pitch (as in a conventional keyboard) or tone colour. While these revolutionary aspects were undoubtedly the attraction for Oliveros, allowing her to maintain and expand her faith in improvised composition, she felt “what was gained in ability to control signal flow was lost in terms of sound qualities”. In parallel to today’s analog versus digital debates, Oliveros missed the warmth and precariousness of the tube oscillators and found this new, more compact, transistorised technology to have a colder, firmer output. Despite this, her short time at Mills saw her incorporate the Buchla 100 into her tape delay system to compose a series of ‘bog’ studies based on local natural sounds that came through her window. These are represented in this box by five works, each over half an hour in length, filled with electronic chirruping, metallic bird calls and automaton frogs. Indeed, one work not included in this set (previously released on a Mills retrospective compilation from 1986 and in its full glory by Pogus a decade later) was perfectly named ‘Alien Bog’. Of those on offer here, though, ‘Bog Bog’ is the most realistic, largely formed of short incessant bursts over a metallic breeze, occasionally building to violent crescendos somehow suggesting both young nested hatchlings fighting over a single worm and malfunctioning machines losing their temper as they struggle to traverse the bog. ‘Big Slow Bog’ is far less impressionistic in comparison as a wide array of patches slowly breathe in and out to showcase Oliveros’ new cool and steely set-up, while the space age satellite-speak of her earlier pieces are revived on ‘Mind Bog’ made particularly eerie by the incorporation of excerpts from a schmaltzy classical LP and a pre-recorded narration that tries and fails to communicate through the tundra of electronic textures.

Disc 11-12: University of California San Diego Electronic Music Studio

Leaving Mills just a year after joining, Oliveros took a job at University of California San Diego, becoming a lecturer in electronic music in recognition of the extensive experience she had built in the rapidly expanding field. Placed in charge of another well-equipped studio she quickly set about testing its limits. Work from this period fills up the last disk and a half of this box set and sees her controls firmly set for the heart of noise: ‘50-50 1’, a work in two pieces (‘Heads’ and ‘Tails’ where ‘Tails’ is appropriately ‘Heads’ played backwards), was once again made on the Buchla but this time without her delay system. The results have an itchy, irritating feel as restless whirring noises, screeching circuitry and feedback progressively become more distorted and intrusive before thinning to a squelchy simmer. The reversed version merely illustrates that the seemingly random noise events don’t sound particularly different played backwards, just reverse-ordered. Most impressive from this period, though, is ‘A Little Noise in the System’ – a most understated title – that is the only piece in this compilation to use a Moog synth. However, it avoids sounds typical of the then new instrument, instead maintaining a deep interest in static that smoothly progresses from a light hiss, through more brooding energies to a journey through extreme weather, the windscreen wipers’ metronomic rhythms underscoring the static’s pitch rising and falling with the exuberant force of a gale. This final chapter in ‘Reverberations…’ clearly shows even stronger links between Oliveros’ work as the sixties drew to a close and today’s purveyors of pure noise.

But be warned, the extensive work so lovingly presented here is wild, raw and unadulterated experimentation. It’s the soundtrack to Pauline Oliveros getting to know new machines and stretching their possibilities on-the-fly with the mindset of a dedicated improviser. Consequently, these are not ideas that are cultivated and refined; rather they represent something much more embryonic. Like a dancer suddenly having the ability to fly unaided, Oliveros doesn’t merely jet off in a straight line to visit far flung relatives, but soars, spins and somersaults in this new sonic dimension, enjoying the rush of air on skin while simultaneously choreographing new modes. Ultimately, her work required a new way of listening as well as new methods of creating sounds, which she would go on to develop and brand as ‘Deep Listening’. This box set though is, perhaps, Deep Listening’s cathartic, primal scream that demonstrates the first phase in the emancipation of her inner sounds while preparing her and her students for working in an increasingly limitless sonic space.