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starwire · 10-23-2002, 10:32 PM

From The Wire, issue 175, September '98.

Included in the article "100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)"

Buffy Sainte-Marie
Illuminations
(Vanguard 1969)

If Dylan going in 1965 turned folk purists into baying hyenas, Buffy Sainte-Marie going electronic would have turned them into kill-hungry wolves, if they weren't already a spent force. Film maker/archivist Harry Smith had established a precedent for folk-avant garde-shamanic pow wows, but but Cree-born Sainte-Marie crosswired them, drawing occult aspects out of her folk and Native American sources with electronics. Synthesized from her guitar and voice, already rich in natural reverb, Michael Czajkowski's score hallucinates ghost shadows on "Poppies," edges the supernatural ballad "The Vampire" with eerieness, and hatches a chorus of chimeras out of her setting of Leonard Cohen's "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot." When Coil picked up on "God...", the song linked them into a chain leading to Sesame Street, where Sainte-Marie roosted for five years. Occult enough?
-Steve Barker

The Wire is my favorite magazine, but it leaves a lot for the reader to figure out. Either that, or those indie intellectual elitests just assume that we're all as well-versed in music as they are.

10-23-2002, 10:32 PM	#19
starwire Junior Member Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Chicago Posts: 7	From The Wire, issue 175, September '98. Included in the article "100 Records That Set the World on Fire (While No One Was Listening)" Buffy Sainte-Marie Illuminations (Vanguard 1969) If Dylan going in 1965 turned folk purists into baying hyenas, Buffy Sainte-Marie going electronic would have turned them into kill-hungry wolves, if they weren't already a spent force. Film maker/archivist Harry Smith had established a precedent for folk-avant garde-shamanic pow wows, but but Cree-born Sainte-Marie crosswired them, drawing occult aspects out of her folk and Native American sources with electronics. Synthesized from her guitar and voice, already rich in natural reverb, Michael Czajkowski's score hallucinates ghost shadows on "Poppies," edges the supernatural ballad "The Vampire" with eerieness, and hatches a chorus of chimeras out of her setting of Leonard Cohen's "God Is Alive, Magic Is Afoot." When Coil picked up on "God...", the song linked them into a chain leading to Sesame Street, where Sainte-Marie roosted for five years. Occult enough? -Steve Barker The Wire is my favorite magazine, but it leaves a lot for the reader to figure out. Either that, or those indie intellectual elitests just assume that we're all as well-versed in music as they are.