Records: Wendy Carlos' Sonic Seasonings

By Nathaniel Rich

Wendy Carlos' imagination transcends the capabilities of modern musical instruments. Fortunately, she is as gifted an inventor as she is a composer of sound.

On her newly rereleased Sonic Seasonings, recorded the same year as her more famous A Clockwork Orange soundtrack, both talents are evident. For Seasonings, she invented several synthesizers and also sampled nature, capturing live sounds with a near-quadraphonic recording process. The resulting four tracks, each 22 minutes long, are named for each season. But don't mistake Carlos' sonic landscaping for those mail-order collections of nature sounds--this work has emotion. That is, it has a louder voice than the tweeting of birds.

Carlos also masters quiet. She revisits minimalist musical themes, often soaring to crescendos, tracing patterns with gradual modulations. Her approach is least effective when she overindulges in nature sounds and loses sight of the whole movement. This is a serious distraction in "Winter," in which howling wolves blunt the intricacies of a movement that attempts to capture the silences of a dead season. Otherwise, organ themes overlap waves and wind, alternately rising to the fore, each sound its own instrument with a singular role.

The highlight of the album, two pieces together entitled "The Land of the Midnight Sun," features instruments that resemble sounds, not the reverse. This piece, along with "Aurora Borealis," uses no live sound, yet the icy overtures of both tracks seem more natural than any of the season pieces. Uncountable organs appear in each piece, as different swoops and oscillations alight at different moments. Perhaps Carlos was excitedly experimenting with her then-newly invented toys. If nothing else, the fluidity of Sonic Seasonings shows the extent to which Carlos has made her own technology operate like clockwork. (East Side Digital)

Back to A&E...