OKSANA LINDE: Aquatic and other worlds (1983-1989) (2022)
Updated: Apr 1, 2022
“I found more charms than annoyances in this first ode offered by Oksana Linde”
1 Intromersión 3:31
2 Viaje hacia la luz 5:07
3 Playa Caribe 6:04
4 Bajo la lluvia 2:14
5 Estudio para una sinfonía folclórica ucraniana 3:02
6 Mariposas Acuáticas 1:44
7 Psicocatálisis 2:57
8 Descubrimiento 3:01
9 Orinoco 3:41
10 Nenufar 2:28
11 Recordando a Kitaro 2:24
12 Ensueño 3:41
(LP/DDL 39:59) (V.F.)
(Analogue Vintage Synth Music)
The timing is perfect! There is an unparalleled craze for the nobility of electronic music (EM) composed and played on analog modular synths at the same time as the emergence of the Latin School, this new EM movement coming from Latin America which finds its place on the Cyclical Dreams label. It's thus the perfect time to talk about Oksana Linde. This musician and painter from Venezuela is the equivalent of Suzanne Ciani and Laurie Spiegel for North Americans. It was in the early 80's, when she was in her early 30's that Ms. Linde became interested in music. She bought her first Polymoog synthesizer and started experimenting and composing short tracks that she recorded on a TEAC reel-to-reel. It was the emerging time of EM in Venezuela with artists such as Ángel Rada, Miguel Noya, Musikautomatika, Vinicio Adames, Oscar Caraballo, Aitor Goyarrola and Jacky Schreiber. A woman in a male-dominated environment that manages to make her own place by weaving a pleasant touch of romance through her compositions that are haloed by that abstract and experimental envelope of analogue EM, 10 years after Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Jean-Michel Jarre and alike have created a new form of advanced EM. She has composed and archived since 1983 an impressive collection of tracks that have remained unreleased. No professional recording, neither on cassette, vinyl nor CD. Nada! Nothing! AQUATIC AND OTHER WORLDS is a first recording for this synthesist. Offered on vinyl in a limited edition of 300 copies, this first album of the Venezuelan artist is also available on the Bandcamp site of Buh Records since the end of March 2022. Two other volumes are expected this summer. I found her style quite melodic in a rather rudimentary sound envelope where our ears are fighting a real battle to a sound that has done its time. But anyway, between Isao Tomita and Synergy, Oksana Linde lays down her weapons of seduction.
It is with shadows of gurgling synthesized sounds that Intromersión begins AQUATIC AND OTHER WORLDS. What jumps out at you is the antiquated nature of the sound. There is no editing or mixing here. Everything is natural and it sounds very vintage for an EM composed around 1983 and that sounds like 1973. Synthesized dialogues emerge from this mass of sound waves of which momentums structure these rhythmless impulses that give life to this new, for the time, art form for the ears. Viaje hacia la luz proposes a cinematographic vision that would fit very well in a vampire movie. The synth layers accumulate into a mass of black clouds floating low with a discrete harmonic score that sounds like an ode to blood on a church organ. The movement is intense with a pervasive tone where one can easily imagine the artist recording his music on his multi-track recorder. Playa Caribe is the first track that hooks our senses with its joyful texture and as light as some of Isao Tomita's movements in Snowflakes Are Dancing, but livelier. Keyboard riffs structure a bouncy rhythm in hazy ambient synth waves. There is a nice melody line in this track, as well as a tropical dance tune. Mariposas Acuáticas is clearly in this style with a vision that is very close to these Claude Debussy nursery rhymes that are performed by the Japanese synthesist. Bajo la lluvia