San Francisco-based composer and Reiki master
Pauline Anna Strom released several albums of strange, celestial ambient and new age music throughout the 1980s, but abandoned making music due to financial troubles and instead focused on her spiritual healing practice. Her work was eventually rediscovered, and the release of a well-received compilation, 2017's
Trans-Millenia Music, encouraged her to acquire new instruments and resume translating the images in her head through sounds. Issued two months after her death,
Angel Tears in Sunlight, her final album, continues in the same expansive, unconstrained mode as her earlier work but explores different tonal realms. "Temple Gardens at Midnight" comes closest to the haunting space music of
Strom's Trans-Millenia Consort releases such as 1984's Spectre, painting starry wisps against a nocturnal canvas. Most of the record, however, seems much more diurnal. The album was chiefly inspired by
Strom's lizards, Little Soulstice and Miss Huff, and several pieces contain marimba-like percussive patterns and bright synth tones, generally channeling the atmosphere of sunnier climates. Yet even on tracks like "Tropical Convergence," there's a sort of displaced, distant feeling, revealing that this music comes from a paradise of the mind rather than an actual beachside or rainforest environment. "The Pulsation" is almost entirely rhythmic, resembling a sort of digital gamelan, and "Small Reptiles on the Forest Floor" feels much more uncoiled, with loose, wooden-sounding percussion drifting underneath crystalline keyboards. On "Marking Time," a curious, hopeful melody navigates its way through a jarring sequence of choral sounds and orchestral stabs. Even more otherworldly is the concluding "Tropical Rainforest," a fascinating soundscape of electronically generated chirps, tweets, and amphibian croaks, as virtual waves rush in the background. ~ Paul Simpson