Pauline Anna Strom recorded a remarkable series of electronic albums during the 1980s, much of it released independently in tiny vinyl and cassette editions. Her work later disappeared into collector culture before being gathered in Trans-Millenia Music, an archival collection drawn from music made between 1982 and 1988.
Strom was blind from birth.
I mention that carefully because it is tempting to turn disability into a simple explanation for an artist’s work. Her music does not need that story in order to be interesting.
What fascinates me instead is the scale of the worlds she created inside a home-produced synthesizer practice that received little mainstream attention at the time.
The titles alone suggest imagined geography: “Virgin Ice,” “Spatial Spectre,” “Rain on Ancient Quays,” “Cruising Altitude 36,000 Feet.”
There is something very modern about this kind of independent world-building.
One person, synthesizers, recording equipment and no requirement for a large institution.
Today Bandcamp and digital distribution make that model ordinary. In the early 1980s, self-releasing cassettes could mean almost disappearing.
The strange thing is that obscurity preserved the music from being fixed to one fashionable moment.
When listeners rediscovered Strom decades later, the future she had imagined was still waiting there.
Pauline Anna Strom – Trans-Millenia Music
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