Buh Records Label has released the debut album of Oksana Linde, a pioneer of electronic music in Venezuela.
The early work of women in electronic music in Latin America is one that is not very well documented. The work of Oksana Linde and the publication of this album provide an opportunity to explore a history that is yet to be written.
Oksana Linde’s Aquatic and Others Worlds collects music from 1983-1989 and, according to the lable, represents one of the “One of the secret treasures of electronic music in Latin America”.
Here’s what the label shared about Linde:
“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 Between 1989 and 1996 she continued to produce another 30 pieces, thus accumulating a large archive that has remained unpublished.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.”
Oksana Linde’s Aquatic and Others Worlds is available now on Bandcamp. You can preview it below:
I love it when women like this come into view. Their angles on things are refreshing, unsaddled with all that testosterone. Those early or unhampered sessions noodling in your fun zone often yield some great moments. Oksana has that touch. A couple of her motifs suddenly brought early Syd Barrett to mind. I’m intrigued. Off to Bandcamp I go.
Albums like this, and Charanjit Singh’s Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat, have made me realize that there’s lots of great electronic music that never got heard, because the composers just weren’t in the right place at the right time.
What other great albums are hiding out there?
Laurie Speigel’s “The Expanding Universe” is revelatory.
Agreed – I’m glad these works and careers of early Female pioneers are coming to light and the attention of more people.
I discovered William Onyeabor a few years back and was blown away, this is another name on my list of early synth people to check out, and ultimately buy their music (I still buy cd’s) – not a male/female thing for me but I realise it is important that these women are recognised for working in a male dominated industry and making an impact that’s remembered still to this day.