LINDE, OKSANA - Aquatic And Other Worlds (1983-1989)

"Oksana Linde belongs to the same creative trail started by artists such as Delia Derbyshire, Suzanne Ciani, or Laurie Spiegel, because like them she knew how to create a personal universe by exploring electronic sounds and to find a place in an eminently masculine environment. Aquatic And Other Worlds is her first album, which compiles electronic synthesizer pieces recorded between 1983 and 1989. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1948, into a family of Ukrainian immigrants, Oksana Linde's work became known at the beginning of the '80s, coinciding with the emergence of a new scene of Venezuelan electronic synthesizer music, with names such as Ángel Rada, Miguel Noya, Musikautomatika, Vinicio Adames, Oscar Caraballo, Aitor Goyarrola, and Jacky Schreiber. In 1981, at the age of 33, Oksana Linde left her job as a researcher due to health issues and began to devote more time to music and painting. She borrowed a Polymoog synthesizer, then a TEAC open reel tape recorder and a Moog Source. With this equipment she set up her small home studio and began to compose her first pieces around 1983-1984. She eventually expanded her equipment, acquiring a 16-channel mixer, a Roland Tape Echo, a TR-505 drum machine, a Korg M1, and years later a Korg TR-88. Between 1984 and 1986 she recorded more than 30 pieces. Between 1989 and 1996 she continued to produce another 30 pieces, thus accumulating a large archive that has remained unpublished. Oksana Linde's music can be intensely hypnotic and psychedelic, but also melodic and playful. Linde programs and plays all the instruments and develops melodic lines that are superimposed on loops and sequences, as well as various layers of reverberant and floating sounds that come and go, and always establish a very cinematic narrative, very typical of the tradition of synthesizer music. The early work of women in electronic music in Latin America is one of those areas that has yet to be worked in depth. In Latin America, the introduction of the synthesizer in experimental, progressive and electronic music from the '70s on, is associated almost exclusively with male figures, which is why the work of Oksana Linde gains particular relevance, as she establishes herself as a figure who breaks that hegemony, and whose extensive production in turn places her as one of the most prolific and notable exponents of synthesizer music in Latin America. Compiled by Luis Alvarado. Includes notes by Oksana Linde, Ale Hop, and Luis Alvarado. Art by René Sánchez. Edition of 300." - Buh Records.