The third installment from RVNG Intl.‘s archival series comes out on May 13th, and it brings us the extraordinary music of ambient pioneer K. Leimar. A Period of Review (Original Recordings: 1975-1983) reveals the true depth of this musician’s staggering output, as it will collect together 2xCDs worth of compositions previously unheard, and considered “outside” of the work offered via Palace of Lights, the label he started with his wife Dorothy Cross back in the 80’s. Born in Winnipeg, Canada, raised in Chicago, and settling with his family in Seattle in 1967, by the late 70’s Leimar would become involved in the region’s budding underground music scene. Influenced from an early age by Dada and Surrealism, Leimar would take his passion for the unexpected into the realms of music, and though unschooled, he would go on to produce masterful pieces of music on cheap, pawnshop instruments. Using a psychedelic and often “ritualized” sense of musical time/space, Leimer would fuse classical and modern sonics into what we now call Ambient and Electronic. His fascination with repetitive loops and self-determining organic patterns is particularly evident on A Period of Review‘s track “Gisella“, where mirrored lines of piano and keyboard play off each other in tranquil passages, giving “Gisella” a natural and intriguingly graceful beauty.
