Pauline Anna Strom - Angel Tears in Sunlight review | John Lewis's contemporary album of the month

The Guardian 0

(RVNG)
Strom’s first album in 30 years – and last, following her death in December – is a quiet riot of digitally manipulated drones and noise

The music of the San Francisco-based composer Pauline Anna Strom, who died just before Christmas, aged 74, might be described as new age – a mystical, trance-like synthesised babble that could conceivably accompany meditation sessions or yoga classes. But Strom was a cheerfully cantankerous figure who drew from more arcane Californian sources. Listen to the music that she released in the 1980s as Trans-Millenia Consort and you can hear traces of the blissful minimalism of Terry Riley; the wobbly electronica that Stephen Hill used to play on his Hearts of Space radio show; the electro-acoustic compositions of Joanna Brouk; even the hypnotic trance music that Alice Coltrane was making in her Santa Monica ashram.