Sinopah

Annea Lockwood and Ruth Anderson - Sinopah

Released in 1998 by the Experimental Intermedia Foundation, Sinopah features two long pieces by Annea Lockwood and Ruth Anderson respectively.The first piece, Annea Lockwoood's 'World Rhythms', originated as a 10-channel live improvisation, first performed in 1975. The version on the CD was recorded in 1997. In constructing this piece, Lockwood used recordings of natural events such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, rivers, waves and mud pools. As she explains in her liner notes, 'these sounds are a physical manifestation of energies which shape us and our environment constantly, energies of which we are not always aware, but which powerfully influence and interact with the rhythms of our bodies.' The result is a intriguing collage of sounds from massive natural events, peppered by the more local sounding of a gong, or the tapping of a pulsar. Lockwood's piece presents rhythms on a number of levels; some are more local and apparent, but I think the piece points more toward the rhythms of the world as a whole (bringing us back to the theory of the world as a living organism in and of itself), and as such there is a more large scale rhythm at play here, not immediately apparent to our senses as would be a more conventional rhythmic structure, requiring us to take a step back and look at the structure of the piece as a whole.
Ruth Anderson's 'I come out of your sleep' is a piece following in the traditions of sound poetry, or text-sound. The piece is based on the speech vowels in Louise Bogan's poem 'Little Lobelia'. The sounds appear in quiet whispers, elongated echoes, weaving in and out of the threshold of hearing like the sound of the wind against the trees. The whispered vowels become mysterious and tranquil tones. Although they have their origins in the words of a poem, these sounds do not form words in themselves (rather they are the vowels extracted from the poem), however the sounds seem to suggest a meaning or a message; the experience of listening is analogous to those moments when you swear you can hear words being spoken through the whispering winds. 'The breath rhythm is an invitation to meditation,' writes Pauline Oliveros in the liner notes; and further, 'the focus of meditation could be the poem, could be the breath, could be the sound, could be the non-threatening nature of the piece as a whole.' A mysterious and captivating work. (Richard di Santo, Incursion.org)

Tracklisting:

1. Annea Lockwood - World Rhythms {45:59}

2. Ruth Anderson - I come out of your sleep {23:32}

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