Beth Anderson - Peachy Keen-O (by John de Clef Piñeiro)::

À Outrance À La Anderson

"Peachy Keen-O:"
Beth Anderson: Torero Piece (1973) - Tower of Power (1973) - Peachy Keen-O (1973) - Ocean Motion Mildew Mind (1979) - Country Time (1979) - Yes Sir Ree (1978) - I Can’t Stand It (1978) - Joan (1974;1977) - Ode (1975). Pogus Productions P210-30-2 (64:40)

The French have an expression for it: à outrance and has been applied to the art and ways of those who are "all out," "full out,"and "way out there." But, of course, in this "do your own thing/anything goes" aggressively eclectic cultural environment of ours, we have our own examples and icons; and in the hybridized twilight zone between the dominance of text and the hegemony of pitched sound, we find the collaged dimensions and medleys of Beth Anderson.

Ms. Anderson’s creative output spans an unusually wide gamut, encompassing the lyricism of new romantic music; to vocal works that include an opera, an oratorio, choral pieces; to theater music, and chamber and orchestral works, as well as the text-sound pieces so well represented in this new CD.

Viewed as a sonic retrospective of Ms. Anderson’s vintage early work, this latest release, containing nine diverse works copied from her originally-recorded tapes, assails the complacent consciousness with sound bites of the mundane and overheard, a mother/daughter phonemic "reading," a monolithic "organic" tone cluster, elemental rap, wails and rants,
superimposed multi-track piano pitches, and the nasal inexorable semi-chant of an auctioneer.

Not unlike the poetry of non-sequiturs and the metasensical, Anderson’s work inhabits a realm of objectified reality, where the stuff of everyday life is fragmentized, compressed, and intensified through isolation to achieve an acute sensation of the moment in sound. That said, it can fairly be asserted that as a modality of perception, Anderson’s
work pushes beyond a familiar formalism, disheveling expectations and taking on the challenge of the incomprehensible. The experience will be a "turn-on" for some, a first for many, and a mystifying puzzlement for most.