Smoke and Mirrors

Programme note:This work attempts to embody my feelings about the way the natural sound world has a profound role in electroacoustic music. In one sense the forms, patterns and associations of environmental phenomena are a starting point for the way we search for meaning in even the most seemingly abstract sounds. But, in another sense, intensive periods of listening to and shaping electroacoustic sound often trigger for me a sensation that I hear the sounds I am working with reflected in some kind of phantom form inside the acoustic reality of daily life around me—blurring the distinction between ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ experience and influencing the way it is played out as part of the creative process.

I see the practice of play with sounds, transforming and mixing them in the studio, as a journey toward understanding their musical possibilities and their deeper relationships. That there are ultimately many possible ways to form and develop these relationships explains the quasi-cyclic nature of Smoke and Mirrors, with many of the core sound shapes and environmental references returning in altered contexts.