A Secret Code, by Pamela Z

A Secret Code

by Pamela Z

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Harsh Agarwal I have heard a fair few vocal improvisers in my listening life. They are a rare breed, they inspire wonder most of them, but then comes an improvisers that breaks away from the breed, so far away, that language is not equipped enough to describe the effect they have on you.

That is, but one way, to think of what Pamela Z has achieved with this album.

bluerobin I play this album with such enthusiasm and delight!! Thank you! It’s wonderful

bekkruse I saw/heard/was blown away by her performance in Seattle last night(On the Boards)

more...

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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album
Six panel wallet with 8-page booklet and one CD

Includes unlimited streaming of A Secret Code via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

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$15 USD or more
Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Free digital pdf booklet included

Purchasable with gift card

$7 USD or more

1.	Quatre Couches / Flare Stains 09:10	buy track
2.	Unknown Person (from Baggage Allowance) 05:30	buy track
3.	Other Rooms 07:42	buy track
4.	A Piece of π 04:05	buy track
5.	Site Four (from Occupy) 06:53	buy track
6.	Typewriter 02:35 video	buy track
7.	He Says Yes (from Echo) 04:03	buy track
8.	Timepiece Triptych: Declaratives in the First Person 05:03	buy track
9.	Timepiece Triptych: Syrinx 06:12	buy track
10.	Timepiece Triptych: De-Spangled 05:09	buy track

about

Everyday experience is never far from Pamela Z’s musical world. Whether it be a typewriter, birdcall, checking in at the airport, or a mess on the street, her creatively quirky imagination transforms it into a moment of profound questioning and wonder. From sonic trifles to complex numbers, the works on A Secret Code – only her third solo album after Echolocation (1988), and A Delay is Better (2004) – span two decades of redefining song.

As fellow composer Annea Lockwood writes in the album notes, “I have long treasured Pamela Z’s work for its vigor, inexhaustible ideas, fluid intricacy of texture, and for its sheer joyousness. An infectious, often surreal humor runs through the whole album, brilliantly upending everyday experience. The letter she is typing disintegrates, flare stains on a road become animate, and in Unknown Person even the TSA’s mundane but weighted questions are subverted, and disintegrate in the hilarious list of packed garments and hopes which follows. Voice, the most intimate of instruments, is a shape-shifter in her hands, transformed by gestural control and electronics in her performances and mutating, time-stretched and compressed as Timepiece Triptych, and throughout her work, with a dazzling compositional virtuosity.”

Including works made for dance, for Kronos Quartet, as well as for Z’s own live-sampled concert performance with bel canto, bubblewrap, and tuning fork options, A Secret Code is not as esoteric as it may sound. Besides, as the ever-philosophical TSA so often asks, “What is the purpose of your travel?”

San Francisco-based composer/performer and media artist Pamela Z works primarily with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video. A pioneer of live digital looping techniques, she processes her voice in real time to create dense, complex sonic layers. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, digital processing, and wireless MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound with physical gestures.

credits

released May 5, 2021

Mastered by Erdem Helvacioglu
Liner notes by Annea Lockwood
Produced and recorded by Pamela Z
Philip Blackburn, design

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about

Pamela Z San Francisco, California

San Francisco-based composer/performer and media artist Pamela Z works primarily with voice, live electronic processing, sampled sound, and video. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, digital processing, and wireless MIDI controllers that allow her to manipulate sound with physical gestures.

pamelaz.com ... more

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