San Francisco-based
Pauline Anna Strom
is a blind composer, keyboard player, and Reiki master who released several LPs and cassettes during the '80s, initially through the short-lived
Ether Ship
collective, then on her own
Trans-Millenia Consort Recordings
. For various reasons, including financial troubles and disillusionment with certain aspects of the new age community and music industry, she stopped composing music and sold her equipment at the end of the '80s, and only in more recent years has her work been rediscovered. This anthology selects pieces from most of her albums, making her music widely, legally available after having some of her work bootlegged over the years. Influenced by the bigger names in ambient and new age (particularly
Klaus Schulze
,
Kitaro
, and
Eno
), as well as science fiction, nature, and ancient history, her recordings are expansive, cascading, and vaporous. They can also be remarkably strange and psychedelic, as alluded to by titles like "Mushroom Trip," although
Strom
has never taken drugs herself. On a few occasions, such as "Energies" and "The Unveiling," she adds slow, reverb-heavy drum machine pulsations, as well as her own ecstatic shrieks into the ether on "Virgin Ice" and "Spatial Spectre." Bringing to mind
Tomita
and
Wendy Carlos
, "Warriors of the Sun" is playful but also a bit twisted and sinister. "Rain on Ancient Quays" incorporates dripping water samples, or else synthesizers that sound like them, along with patterns of eerie, melancholy melodies and alarming booms and thuds.
Trans-Millenia Music
is a remarkable anthology of powerful work by a truly original artist who has escaped proper recognition for far too long. ~ Paul Simpson