Pogus Productions is quite a prolific venture, managed by sound artist and composer – and administrator! – Al Margolis. A stream of CDs leaves the Pogus compound, with some of the most interesting contemporary sound art as well as a few historical releases as well. Margolis also manages some other highly interesting labels in the U.S.A., such as XI (Experimental Intermedia Foundation), Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening and Thomas Buckner’s Mutable Music – all exceptional recording companies, standing out of the global crowd of competitors. Of special interest to me are the choice few issues of Al Margolis’ own art on Pogus, of which this CD is the latest, flown to my Scandinavian doorstep aboard a big airplane – probably built in Seattle – through – 50 degrees Centigrade, and currently spinning on “repeat all” in my laser box, the bleak light releasing a multitude of exciting, hypnotic sounds.

The first piece – a grand work – comes in four sections, titled simply after the three words and one comma that make up the title, thus the 1st movement is called An, the 2nd Innocent, the 3rd , [comma] and the 4th Abroad.

I always enjoyed Margolis’ way with titles and words, which always make me get into the lingual properties of… language! This makes me think more about letters, words, sentences – BOOKS! – mouths, oral cavities, expressions, body language and whatnot! Even Margolis’ usual alter ego, or what ever it is – If, Bwana – always startled me. It still brings me a special atmosphere, in which to listen and experience and think. That’s why I’m here, that’s why this part of the universe called Loco is here, to think, experience and develop. I’m the universe, looking at myself, and so are you, so are we. In some environments this is easier to grasp, to accept – and the If, Bwana situation is a realm where cosmic awareness comes easy.

An Innocent, Abroad is an extended work, about 43 minutes, for electronics, vocals and flutes. Lisa Barnard originally recorded a 16 minutes long vocal improvisation. The leaflet distributed with the reviewing copy of the CD (with insertions from the CD cover) states that “all parts were drawn [from] or are inter-related to the original vocal track”. That track in its original shape is, however, not present. The text continues: “The text/voice part has been multi-tracked, and now represents five ‘separate entities’. The electronic parts have been extracted and processed from the original vocal track. The five flute parts were performed by Jane Rigler and Jacqueline Martelle. The flutists were each given [some of] the five vocal tracks (Jackie three, Jane two), and asked to improvise [on them]. None of the performers heard the entire piece that they worked on.”

But I have heard it, and it’s a revelation. I’ve just finished a review of Frank Rothkamm’s LAX CD, just out, and it brought me to high levels of artistry and artistic integrity. Al Margolis maintains this very high quality in his works on the An Innocent, Abroad CD.

When I start to listen, after a little while, I feel strangely comfortable, even though the sound world that Margolis presents may appear bewildering, alien, enchanted. I soon realize that some of the flute sounds are similar to Kathinka Pasveer’s performance practice in Kathinka’s Gesang on Stockhausen Edition Volume 28 B; that soaring, wheezing, shooting star sonority, which is supposed to guide the departed spirit towards either liberation or re-birth, through the Bardo of the intermediary states, like the Bardo Thödol.

A wretched, bent, embellished sound opens the CD, reaching out in the manner of submarine plants towards an approaching diver, or like Northern lights across cold, empty spaces, dancing in serene, intoxicated beauty high above the lonely hiker. Long pauses divide the sounding stretches, in a slow breath. A female voice mixes with the alien sounds of this spell. The voice, too, is strange, sleepy – or conjuring in some way, casting an incantation net across the mental premises. I can imagine a medicine man almost hidden in an upsurge of smoke, in a veil of heavy fragrance, sweating, daring a contact with super-human layers of existence.

I’ve seldom heard music with these heavily shamanistic properties. I have a good friend by the name of Hebriana Alainentalo, who indulges herself in vocalisms of a similar atmosphere, but usually without the further sounding layers of non-vocal audio. And then we have Stockhausen and some of his wind music pieces, which also provide the vehicle for shamanistic travel, and the Swedish composer and cellist Peter Schuback and his composition La montrata e la Luna – but the way I feel right now, listening for the first time to Al Margolis’ flowing, hypnotic mix of electronics, flutes and vocals, I feel transported farther than ever before. Magic! If I were to grade the associations according to relevance, I think Peter Schuback’s ghostly La montrata e la Luna would come closest to Al Margolis’ An Innocent, Abroad.

I get the same feeling I experienced once when hiking a valley up north in Lapland called Stuor Reaiddávággi, when I was so tired that I even failed to tie my bootlaces. Somehow my body took me where I was supposed to go, but I felt like I was piggy-backing it, my head somewhere else, and in Margolis’ music here I can recognize that place.

If you lean your head another way, listen with other connotations, with other motives, you might say that the sounds, assessed by their characters, are arranged beautifully, in wild, yet gracious motions, together achieving the most madly beautiful sonic colors and nuances, while providing incisive, individual figures that sometimes surprise, always delight! Margolis has outdone himself here, in ingenuity and creative flow.

This is a classic sound work, right from the beginning. Lisa Barnard has done a great job with her vocal part. Especially the out-drawn, sleepy, hypnotic calls that shoot in extended trajectories through the dense, yet transparent sonic space renders the whole work a peculiar, singular appearance.

The second work on the CD, and track 5, is Issue, about 14 minutes long. This also carries vocals by Lisa Barnard and electronics and processing by Margolis.

It starts on a bronze lure note, or in the likeness of a dijeridoo, extending winding, multi-layered, harsh drones, soon involving voices, though quite processed and also, originally, executed in overtone singing, in khoomei. This approach screws the listening deep into a very distant world of shades and shadows, figures passing by at the periphery of light ‘round the campfire way out in the Australian Outback, or in Brittany a few centuries before the disappearance of the last Neanderthals.

Margolis has processed Lisa Barnard’s multi-tracked voice also pitch-wise, making it sound like a group of men and women uttering these unintelligible swarms of phonemes, in fact placing a vision in your mind of a tribe of indigenous people gathering to speak with the gods. Very impressive. The disorder of voices and dijeridoo sounds sometimes give way to peculiar high-pitch chorus emergences, and in some other instances I must make – perhaps far-flung -analogies to Stockhausen’s Stimmung.

To sum it up, I am very impressed by this CD, which brings some aspects of the mixed-form, i.e. the mixture of acoustic instruments and electronics, as well as the utilization of the human voice in electronic composition, into partly new, uncharted realms, in which I feel the urge to dwell long! Highly recommended. New sound art of the highest quality.