Echolocation is the debut album by Pamela Z, the pioneering Bay Area intermedia composer and performance artist. Written and recorded over three years, and self-released and distributed on cassette in 1988, Echolocation is genre-defying document of Z’s earliest experiments with live voice and delay, and the impetus of an artist’s three decade search for sounds yet unfelt.

Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, Z traded one snowy backdrop for another to attend the University of Colorado in Boulder at the tail end of the 70s, where she pursued a degree in music while taking local gigs covering Joni Mitchell and Malvina Reynolds b-sides on an acoustic guitar. While a host at KGNU, Z discovered a vast world of avant-garde music in the community radio station’s library, and was inspired to create towards, and alongside, the fringe sounds she pulled from the stacks and broadcast. This revelation intersected with a new era of accessible and affordable instruments and home recording technology, and a diversifying community of artists self-releasing music on cassette and finding an audience through underground publications.

Z moved again to San Francisco in 1984, legally changed her last name, and furthered her practice of vocal processing in live environments. A city simultaneously nurturing and stratifying the free spirit of the two decades prior, Z assumed an immediate role in the Bay Area’s interdisciplinary performance art scene, and began curating Z Programs, her own concert and event series.