Olivia Block Change Ringing Cut CD Available through the Helen Scarsdale Agency: $15.00      Olivia Block has always intrigued me, in part because she emerged from a tight knit community of artists out of Texas that also included Michael Northam, Seth Nehil, and John Grizinich, all of whose recordings I have enjoed immensely. But her introduction into sound art is also quite amazing, as she was the singer of a Medicine / Savage Republic band called The Marble Index... until she stumbled across a performance by those three aforementioned artists, and she dropped the art-rock trajectory in order to pursue collaborations with those three artists. That must have been around 1995, as I remember hearing that Marble Index record back then. Since then, Mrs. Block has gone on to be a highly decorated composer with some very impressive credentials.      Parts of Change Ringing dates back to her early experiments with sound, yet she completed the album in 2005 as the conclusion to a trilogy of releases that includes Pure Gaze and Mobius Fuse. The album's scope situates spartan notes and tones from acoustic instruments (performed by some 15 avant-garde freelancers) against a spartan collage of processed field recordings and subtly rendered DSP electronics. Block's sensibility seems to be informed by the early work of Jim O'Rourke, especially his masterful album Scend and its Illusion of Safety doppleganger Probe. For all of the saxophones, clarinets, trombones, and oboes that Block has recruited into the composition, they have all been thoroughly blurred into the subtle mix of somber electric interludes, slow-motion digital errata, and whispering drones. There is never anything as threatening as those O'Rourke albums could be, but Block is just as effective a composer. A bit short though, clocking in at 30 minutes; but well worth it!