Pauline Anna Strom

Throughout the 1980s, San Francisco-based composer Pauline Anna Strom issued multiple LPs and cassettes of eerie, otherworldly new age and ambient soundscapes shaped by nature, science fiction, and ancient history. She withdrew from music-making toward the close of the decade to pursue spiritual healing, yet the appearance of a widely praised anthology prompted her to create one last record, Angel Tears in Sunlight, issued in 2021.

Blind since birth, Strom was raised near New Orleans, where she devoted much of her youth to classical recordings and audiobooks. After marrying a serviceman, she relocated to San Francisco, where the Hearts of Space program on KPFA introduced her to the work of Klaus Schulze, Kitaro, and kindred new age and ambient artists. Captivated, she acquired an electronic organ, additional synthesizers, and a Tascam four-track recorder, then immersed herself in daily composition that often stretched until six in the morning.

She soon encountered Lemon DeGeorge and Willard Van De Bogart, founders of the Ether Ship collective, who produced and issued her debut, 1982’s Trans-Millenia Consort. Although the album garnered favorable notices, it quickly faded from view; financial disputes and other conflicts led Strom to sever ties with Ether Ship. She established her own Trans-Millenia Consort Recordings imprint, beginning with the hallucinogenic Plot Zero. Spectre appeared in 1984, after which mounting costs halted further LP releases. Four years later, following a second marriage, she issued four limited cassettes whose experimental character incorporated field recordings and unconventional sound sources. Persistent monetary pressures forced her to sell her equipment and devote herself to work as a spiritual healer and Reiki master.

Over time her recordings attracted a following, and several albums circulated as bootlegs. In 2017 Rvng Intl. released Trans-Millenia Music, the first officially licensed anthology of her work. Its strong critical reception motivated Strom to obtain fresh instruments and return to composing. She died at age 74 in December 2020; Angel Tears in Sunlight appeared posthumously two months afterward.