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Pauline Oliveros – with Goddard in the Dan Harpole Cistern

 

This piece made me feel uneasy. It sounds very eerie and could have come straight out of a horror movie. I guess the idea came from singing in the cistern, as there are a lot of echoes in there. I also watched the short video with it. When the lady came down the ladder, she looked a bit like an angel being shone on from above. But as she went to explore the cistern, I found it quite spooky. But at the same time, it was also beautiful at some parts. It reminded me a bit of the Titanic, or sirens singing in the ocean. The voices drift far and mix together nicely.

The clanging that comes later on gave me chills. It sounds scary, like a murderer trying to break out of a prison cell. And the dark video with it, it is just very spooky and mystical. The whole atmosphere of the song and the video fits together nicely, it is something I could imagine at a cult meeting or something like that.

I wouldn’t call this music in the normal sense; it is just sounds mixed together in some kind of harmony. I do wonder how many people were involved in the making of this, as it sounds like a big number of voices, but only very few people are shown in the video, and none of them are singing as far as I could see. Or maybe the sound was made separately from the video. However, at some parts it sounded like there were some sounds of the filming or the camera gear, some small clicks. But I might be wrong.

I would not listen to this in my free time, maybe just to create a spooky atmosphere for a movie night with friends. That is all it could serve me for.

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