Pauline Oliveros and Ione / WATER ABOVE SKY BELOW NOW

Pioneering American composer Pauline Oliveros and author Ione present Water Above Sky Below Now. An experimental musician and educator, Oliveros is the creator of the deep listening practice of highly attentive full-body audition. She is joined on the album by Ione, an author and improviser of spoken word and sonic vocals, and the artistic director of the Deep Listening Institute founded by Oliveros. This three-part improvisation was produced using Oliveros’s Expanded Instrument System (EIS), an electronic sound-processing environment that allows improvising musicians to transform their own acoustic input in real time. Here, her specially tuned digital accordion — accompanied by Ione’s vocals and spoken word — is converted via EIS, manipulated, and diffused through multiple channels. “The EIS imperative (and improvisation imperative),” Oliveros writes, “is to listen and respond: spatial relationships and progressions are as important as the traditional parameters of music.” The release of Water Above Sky Below Now is the latest movement in Oliveros’s six-decade-long career, which began at the San Francisco Tape Music Center in the ’60s and was distinguished with the William Schuman Award for lifetime achievement in 2009. Produced by Rabih Beaini; designed by Tankboys; original cover art by Nathalie du Pasquier.