The record starts softly, expanding outward from steady footing at the smallest scale. Kohl begins with a single note on the cello, which she sustains across much of “dawn | pulse,” the first piece. Yet from this droning tonic, a rich world blooms. Stewart and Johnson each enter above Kohl, orbiting around a single chord as they move to other tones within the scale. Sonorous tape loops swell and recede throughout the piece, and the trio sings breathy, open notes that persist throughout much of the composition’s second half. There’s a quiet grandeur to the opener that, much like Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring or the pastoral traditions it is based on, basks in the immediate pleasure of harmonic simplicity. And as with Copland’s ballet score (which, at times, has been called socialist realist), the piece’s plainspoken nature conceals a deeper complexity that is revealed as the collection unfolds.
While their improvisations are typically organized around underlying drones, the three musicians also deploy a striking variety of techniques. On “laundry | blood,” Kohl introduces a short pizzicato pattern that is paired with a bellowing, tightly voiced chord, and later vocal lines from her groupmates. “Chewing gum” and “snow | touch” both expand outward from grainy tape recordings that slowly come into focus, while “burning | counting (sleeping)” announces its arrival with a thick cluster of bowed harmonics that initially resemble tape loops—if only until the individual parts diverge, each performer’s contribution growing increasingly strident. Situated between two of the album’s softest pieces, the track bleeds boldly into the red, its dissonant pattern rising, falling, and rising again with the start of another fast-paced passage. The album seems to resist legibility at every turn; phrases that emerge slowly are later abandoned in under a minute, as the trio moves from sound to sound together, often landing far away from the original theme or idea.
Yet to sift through the album as a collection of ideas is to wholly miss the point. Like its title suggests, BODY SOUND prioritizes subconscious impressions over the kind of lofty chin-scratching you might encounter elsewhere in classical or experimental music. With her Sonic Meditations, Oliveros recognized that sound can be restorative in moments of personal crisis, and that making music together, however unpolished or plainspoken, is one of the great pleasures of a life lived in the company of others. Building on their work as individuals, where their training sits comfortably in the background of tactile experiments with synths and tape machines, the trio returns to Oliveros’ central insight. Together, they remind us how nourishing collaboration can be.
