I’ve been waiting for the right chance to put some of Daniel Lentz’s On the Leopard Altar in a playlist. I came across this album on one of my random library CD haul days during my undergrad studies. Turns out, my vocal teacher at the time, Robert Best, and Daniel Lentz met at Arizona State University – the same school I would attend for grad school only a few years after hearing this album for the first time. The world is small. And full of weird noises.

This album is from 1984, but I’m going to say it was a little ahead of its time and put it with the rest of this 90s-vibes playlist. Enjoy.

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1. Distanced by Kevin Keller. Album: Pendulum. Released: 1999 “Easily viewed as one continuous piece, Pendulum is a well thought-out smooth sonic journey. Kevin Keller’s well-crafted synth timbres are predominant throughout the CD, but they share the space nicely with David Darling’s reverberant cello, Jeff Pearce’s guitar loops and Bruna Lamy’s infinite whispers. The overall mood of the album is that of vastness, with Keller’s well-placed, ever evolving rhythms transporting the listener through it.” -Chuck van Zyl/Star’s End
2. Duet by Steve Reich performed by The Smith Quartet. Album: different trains. Composed: 1993. I’m 99% sure the album is mislabeled. Triple Quartet does not have a Duet moment. Duet is a piece in and of its own. I feel like this is Steve Reich put through an Easy Listening filter – and I’m not mad about it.
3. The Last Time by Pauline Oliveros. Album: Ghostdance. Released: 1998. If you are a new fan of her work, here is an introduction to some of her philosophy around music. “Pauline Oliveros’ life as a composer, performer and humanitarian was about opening her own and others’ sensibilities to the universe and facets of sounds. Her career spanned fifty years of boundary dissolving music making. In the ’50s she was part of a circle of iconoclastic composers, artists, poets gathered together in San Francisco. In the 1960’s she influenced American music profoundly through her work with improvisation, meditation, electronic music, myth and ritual.”
4. Is it Love by Daniel Lenz. Album: On the Leopard Altar. Released: 1984. John Schaefer of WNYC’s New Sounds writes: “On the Leopard Altar, with its multiple vocal, keyboard and wineglass parts, haunting neo-romantic melodies, and unusual additive and subtractive structures, is a remarkable collection.”
5. BluesAx: BluesOutParker by Larry Austin performed by Steven Duke. Album: SoundPlays, Cityscapes, SoundPortraits. Released: 1999. Tom Johnson has written of Austin’s music, “His style is neither uptown nor downtown, nor is it minimal, eclectic, hypnotic, or European. But it works, it is strongly personal, and it has something to say in all these directions…. The real source of Austin’s music, however, is clearly Charles Ives, who also liked musical symbols, enjoyed collaging them together as densely as he could, and never had much of a knack for prettiness.”
6. Unusual Balance by Brian Eno and Jah Wobble. Album: Spinner. Released: 1995. I think this is the perfect mesh of Eno’s ambient and rock work… and the 90s.
7. Nga Iwi E by Dame Gillian Whitehead. Album: You hit him he cry out. Released: 1997. “Born and educated in Aotearoa, Gillian Whitehead (DNZM, MNZM), is of Ngai Terangi and Tuhoe descent. She lived and worked as a freelance composer in Europe and Australia for 15 years, then taught at the Sydney Conservatorium during the 1980s before returning to Aotearoa to resume her career as a free-lance composer.“
8. Whispers in the Ears of Night by Pauline Oliveros and Randy Raine-Reusch. Album: In the Shadow of the Phoenix. Released: 1997. If you’ve been subscribed to my newsletter for a few weeks, you can now name three of Pauline Olivero’s albums, which means you are now a true fan.
9. QS by David Behrman performed by Maggi Payne. Album: The Extended Flute. Released: 1999. From Wikipedia: In the early 1960s [David] was the producer of Columbia Records’ Music of Our Time series, which included the first recording of Terry Riley’s In C.[1] In 1966 Behrman co-founded Sonic Arts Union with fellow composers Robert Ashley, Alvin Lucier and Gordon Mumma. He wrote the music for Merce Cunningham’s dances Walkaround Time (1968), Rebus (1975), Pictures (1984) and Eyespace 40 (2007). In 1978, he released his debut album On the Other Ocean, a pioneering work combining computer music with live performance.
10. G-Spot Tornado by Frank Zappa performed by Ensemble Modern. Album: The Yellow Shark. Released: 1993. I had the privilege of seeing Ensemble Modern perform works from Yellow Shark live at the Ojai Festival in the early 2000s. This album prompted this address to the US Senate: