Album Notes

Kent Sparling employes the classic methods of musique concréte, manipulation and montage of sound elements from a diverse range of sources, including plates, flowerpots, toy instruments, bells, piano, voice and percussion, "catchments" of environmental sound, and a class of sounds he calls "picophonics".

Picophonics are the sounds of vibrations so small that they don't move enough air to be perceived by the ear; these vibrations are registered by contact microphones and amplified to a greater degree than sound waves picked up by a microphone, hence 'picophonics' offer a glimpse into a world of micro-sounds.

On the piece "In a Mumbling Sky", contact mics placed at the bottom of a cluster of dune-grass produced picophonics evocative of a giant bamboo forest.

"At the time, I was working with a method whereby I would create a complex drone made up of tape and delay loops, live sounds and Serge signal processing; my goal was to build rich, organic settings, over which I would add a few carefully selected sound events.

As the backdrops took form, an overall emotional tone would suggest itself, and I would then build tension and release by layering in sounds suggested by those emotions.

I find this kind of music interesting because timbre and sound character take over all the responsibility of transmitting the emotional message, therefore the old tools of melody, harmony and rhythm are brought into examination."