Sinopah Experimental

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When Annea Lockwood says, "World Rhythms," she is not referring to djembes, tambours, gimbris and dumbeks. Her world rhythms are actually the natural rhythms of the world; the viscous 'glug' of mud pools in Yellowstone National Park, the musical giggle of the Hudson River and its tributaries, the cheeps and peeps of crows in England and treefrogs by the Mississippi, the shiftings and kvetchings of an unquiet Earth and the tossings of a restless sea. These sounds have been the essence of too many "Tranquil Moments" and "Forest Meditation" CDs, and with good reason, as they do convey a powerful feeling of communion with the Bigger Picture. Lockwood has little interest in weaving these environmental recordings into another hour of New Age pabulum. She respects the energy and power inherent in each sound - especially the potential for violence and destruction in all natural forces (er, watch out for those bloodthirsty North American spring peepers?). Remember that the same waters which now splash and play can turn to raging torrents when riled by the rains. Lockwood's real-time arrangements of these nature sounds take on a truly cosmic scope, integrating the audible pulsar traces of the Vela Supernova and deliberate, "biorhythmically" timed soundings of a gong, considering the finite and the infinite in her juxtapositions of "frogs and stars," water and fire, the living and the non-living - rarely rising above a rustle. The familiar becomes an invitation to explore the unknown and the unknowable. Rather than lulling the mind into an intellectual coma, this digitally-preserved version of "World Rhythms" (originally performed as a live improvisation in 1975, with an elaborate speaker setup) excites those mental processes which make connections and grasp for deeper meanings. For 45:48, your cerebral cortex is stroked and teased while your ears are tickled and pleased by the Stereophonic panaudiorama. A little something for the neural pathways out there in nappy-time land. On "Sinopah" (a Montana mountain sacred to the Blackfeet nation and a favorite hiking spot of Lockwood and Anderson's during their own direct communes with nature), "World Rhythms" is paired with Anderson's "I Come Out Of Your Sleep." It is an even quieter and considerably more minimal piece. Anderson cites "4'33"," "I Am Sitting In A Room", "Ursonate" and Zen meditation techniques as reference points for "I Come...," and the 25:31 piece makes notable allusions to each. Whispered intonations, contoured like the shifting dunes of the Sahara, have been resculpted from the vowels in four lines of a Louise Bogan poem ("Little Lobelia"). Consonants dance; vowels flow. So, as Anderson recites (or, rather, breathes) her rhythmically reduced reading of Bogan's text, we hear only her inspirations and expirations, the normally internalized meditation which is her very private and inwardly-directed interpretation of the poem. Breathing is the cornerstone of meditation, and "I Come..." therefore becomes just that - an intimate sharing. Once drawn in by the seductive calm of Anderson's meditative state, we breathe with her. Her experience becomes ours, as do the feelings of joy and placidity which this particular poem stirs in her. Such peace, love and mutual-understanding can be cynically misread as still more New Age tosh. Or it can be appreciated as an extraordinary invitation to share another person's mindstate. If Lockwood turned our ears outward, toward the truly awesome interplay of the world's polyrhythms, Anderson now turns them inward - toward the spaces within us; where language is merely a conduit for emotion, and words and letters are nothing but symbols for the meaning which dwells within them.