Album Notes

THE WIRE: "Sheer genius from the most gifted and enterprising vocalist/composer/audio artist in the US since the heyday of Joan La Barbara and Meredith Monk...The effects are stunning...Essential." A Delay Is Better is the first CD devoted exclusively to works by the "funny, inventive, and talented" (Village Voice) composer/performer Pamela Z, and the recording offers some of her most widely enjoyed signature pieces. The New York Times writes the "acclaimed internationally" Z is "a wonderfully compelling performer with a lot of range." The New Yorker comments that "at the center of it all is the simple beauty of her classically trained voice - which can give her work an almost medieval purity." And the San Francisco Chronicle has enthusiastically commented that "Pamela Z creates lustrous sonic landscapes." The essence of Z's mesmerizing music is a skillful blending of her lovely voice with refined electronic manipulations. Pauline Oliveros writes that "this CD beguiles us with a rich introduction to a fine vocalist/composer who adeptly embraces technology," noting that Z "invigoratingly explores great varieties of solo, chorused, extended, and manipulated vocal materials." Some of the CD's dozen pieces draw on everyday sounds. For example, the percussion loops in Bone Music are built up from the performer pounding an empty five-gallon water bottle, while the pieces The MUNI Section and NEMIZ use sampled San Francisco street sounds. The witty Geekspeak manipulates recordings of computer engineers providing us with the definitive word on the differences between nerds and geeks. Other pieces use found text, such as Pop Titles 'You' (based on titles of popular songs). Some pieces use only Z's voice, such as Badagada and Number 3, while another work, Feral, uses mostly bassoon samples and little vocal material. Pamela Z has composed commissioned works for such new music ensembles as the Bang on a Can All Stars, the California E.A.R. Unit, and St. Luke's Chamber Orchestra. She has toured extensively around the world, and is the recipient of numerous awards, including a recent Guggenheim Fellowship.