Review of Mary's CD

After an off-list exchange, Mary Beth Ackerley very kindly sent me a
copy of her CD, "Intervals of Motion".

I went straight for the music rather than beginning with the liner
notes, and recommend this order. A quiet, darkened room, headphones
if possible, alone if possible. I closed my eyes and soon felt half
asleep yet wide awake at the same time.

The music is not pleasant; it is not sweet; it has no tonic (that I
could discern); it has no time signature. What happens is quite
unpredictable, almost chaotic on first hearing.

I had the sensation of being in a dream as a very young child (2 or 3
years old), in which the world is a very uncertain place, with dangerous
forces all around. A war zone, yet also an all-enveloping womb. At
times it seemed like an underwater hell, complete with the wails of the
damned. But one moves through hell, never staying in one room very
long, howbeit there are many rooms with many kinds of torment.

At any given moment, there is likely to be a wide range of frequencies
sounding together, from very low bass to moderately high treble, with
variations of course, and the sensation is usually neither consonant nor
dissonant.

Gradually, through succeeding tracks, I felt I was emerging from water
and ascending into ethereal realms. I didn't make it all the way
through in one sitting (there are 19 tracks and about 63 minutes of
music), but did get past track 12, which I have been charged with
focusing on for unblocking purposes.

Mary had predicted that I'd have interesting dreams, and I did. I was
diving into the ocean, sorting out tracts of water, deciding which to
keep and which to discard. Some that I wanted to keep were
uncomfortably loud, but I realized that it was possible to turn their
volume down to a level I could live with.

As for the liner notes... they refer to things I know little of and am
not in a position to evaluate. There is some mention of the microtonal
tuning philosophy: a "subharmonic of the Lambdoma Matrix of Pythagoras".
Hmmm: must learn more! But what I seek most in any music does not
depend upon knowledge of how it was constructed. Music is a portal into
ourselves in some deep, mysterious way. Mary's music reflects a
powerful resonance with the way energy (of some kind) can be conveyed
through that portal. I recommend it highly!

JdL

P.S. Mary tells me she's almost out of this CD, but has a new one in the
works. Go, Mary!!