Pauline Anna Strom, Angel Tears in Sunlight
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Pauline Anna Strom Angel Tears in Sunlight RVNG Intl.

19.02.21

Under her Trans-Millenia Consort alias, the late Pauline Anna Strom emerged as an enigmatic and visionary synthesist in the 80s. Following on from 2017’s archival release of Trans-Millenia Music, Strom delivers both her first new music in over three decades and her final offering. Angel Tears in Sunlight comprises an intricate immersion into the symbiotic cosmos Strom existed amongst, in harmony with her analogue synths and iguanas.

Viewing her instrumentation as a composer in itself, Strom dissolves the boundaries between the artist and their tools. On record, this manifests in a seamless transience from the luminous hypnotism of Tropical Convergence to the whirring, gurgling fauna of Tropical Rainforest.

What is most remarkable of the worlds that Strom creates is her ability to at once conjure sublime natural landscapes and otherworldly, machine-fuelled terrains. Marking Time reverberates with ominous and off-kilter synthesised incantations that hold a celestial reverence. Whilst The Eighteen Beautiful Memories gracefully unfurls like morning sunlight breaking through clouds, flowing subsequently into the incandescent Equatorial Sunshine.

Informed significantly by her time away from composing and dedicated to spiritual healing, Angel Tears in Sunlight sees Strom delve deeper into actualising music as “the connective link between the source and us.” With this she also pertinently reflects on life and loss through the album’s titular motif, refracting this through sounds that encompass both the dark and the light.

Although dedicated to a close friend who passed during the making of this record, you can’t help but feel Strom’s intuitive insight of her own ephemerality at the heart of Angel Tears in Sunlight too. A transcendent parting gift to the universe, Angel Tears in Sunlight is a timeless addition to Strom’s canonical legacy.