Environs was written as environmental performance piece for outside performance in a large, open, urban square. It deals with our surroundings and the ways in which we perceive ourselves within the environment. In this case surroundings is taken in the broadest sense – physical, spatial, temporal, emotional. The piece focuses on the use of sound to manipulate our perception of the environment and attempts to create a new context in which new relationships lead to new forms of experience. Environs is scored for three Emulator II digital sampling keyboard instruments, soprano saxophone, tenor voice, and visual images. It mixes recognizable and abstract sounds to create a sometimes surrealistic, sometimes serene world of sound and image. Sounds present within the natural environment are welcome to mix into the piece to forge an integration with the real world.

This work was created by the multi-lagering of entirely acoustic sound sources. Scrap metal, voices, bowed aluminium pot hids and guitar have been orchestrated in large numbers (averaging 200 tracks and up to 500 atacks per second) to produce new sound structures through synthesis complexity. It is an extended orchestrational approach which arms at developing the morphological (inner structure of sound) rather than the syntactical (the ordering of sounds) aspect of musical structure. The gestures tend to be extended to effectively neutralize or suspend the initial dramatic import of otherwise familiar gestures. Crescendi, accelerandi and increases in density all take on a now sensibility in this context.

The cube is the representation of the sound block, it is composed as follows: - creation of a material - creation of a writing - spatilization - total interaction between the sound micro-structure and the shape of the sound block. It comes in different forms (perspective) according to its location in space. This is not a variation of the sound block, but its presentation in a form each time different. The whole of the symphony results from the composition of the sound blocks. It is from this concept that I have developed a methodology of work in three stages / three sequences, of which the last "souprematika" is the creation of a new musical aesthetic. The sequence 3: Souprematika This third sequence is characterized by the creation of digital sounds from the analysis of the sound spectrum of the raw materials of the sequence 1, and those of the sequence 2, with the aim of creating a melodic mass. The whole piece is computer controlled, its extreme precision allows me to have control over all the musical parameters: stop, changes of frequencies, cycles, dynamics, heights, intensity, etc ... ) The themes are exposed without their developments. Use of tone as …

Is a collection of fantasy and collected from a few excerpts of my favorite composers. The music begins to take shape as a kind of mask propelling its musical fragments. Intensive use has been made of the Vax numbering system in technical production. The programs used were: Chant, developed at IRCAM by Xavier Rodet; used for the synthesis of speech and song; Bada in conjunction with the mix. A transformation program developed at EMS by Paul Pignon.

The title refers to the name of the tooth-shaped device that, on a sewing machine, serves to advance the fabric. In this work, the different functions of a sewing machine are combined with the voice to create a contrast between the timbre qualities of a woman's voice and the industrial and metallic sounds, sometimes abrasive, of the machine. Voice and machine are assembled elliptically, sometimes dry and inhibited, sometimes smeared and hallucinatory to assert new meanings and signs. With the voice of Deanna Ferguson.

Recollections concludes the Time Past series of works started in 1981. It examines three key ideas in the works of Marcel Proust - time, memory and dreams - in the context of a solo performer struggling to reconstruct the opening of Dante's Vita Nuova. (He's forgotten the words, perhaps even how to speak and is learning the process all over again.) The amplified solo voice is integrated or contrasted with two tapes (heard simultaneously). One is based upon vocal sounds processed using the Fairlight II Computer Music Instrument, the other upon a simple montage of texts and abstracted fragments. Recollections was commissioned by the vocal group Vocem for Alan Belk with funds made available by Greater London Arts. The tape was realised in the Electroacoustic Music Studio at City University, London between November 1985 and January 1986. It was first performed by Alan Belk and the composer at an Electro-Acoustic Music Association Concert at The Place, London on the 20th of January 1986.

When I realized the electronic music of "Astratto", in the 1986, I already founded with other composers the S.I.M. (Società di Informatica Musicale) in Rome , and we worked about the design of a digital systems controlled by host PC and based on the application of the TMS 32010 16/32 bit DSP Texas Instrument. It was one of the first world application of this new technologies in the field of electronic music. At that time one of the DSP systems was controlled by an 16bit Host Pc. The DSP system, called Fly system, was interfaced with the host and with a musical keyboard (no MIDI interface) and I worked with simple real time routines written in TMS 320 assembly that I already experimented in a my previous digital piece. In the case of "Astratto" we have already improved the possibilities of the synthesis by table look oscillators and the record / play system from the musical keyboard, and multiple complex events can be recorded in the same time. So I could realized the music in real time mode, and to record the note-events on the Host PC. (24 real time enveloped oscillators can be computed at 16khz of sampling rate). …

This piece uses concrete sounds, not retouched, of our urban environment (circulation, industry, trade etc ...) contained in an electronic framework. The title thus refers to the place where these two antinomic elements meet in an incessant conflict, symbolizing in this the games of tensions, contrasts, movements in delta, omnipresent in the work. Completed in June 1986, this work was produced in McGill University studios in Montreal using Synclavier II and DX-7 synthesizers. It has also received support from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Recording of Ben Guttman's The Birth or Report From the Bird of a New Weather.

This work is based entirely on the composer's closely microphoned voice and is a kind of self portrait.

Recording of Samuel Headrick's Journeys.

"Wet" mainly includes computer-processed sounds. The rest of the sounds are produced by synthesizers controlled by computers and an acoustic violin.

This is a concrete piece made in 1986. The sound materials in opposition are a "crash" hard, metallic and a serious white noise. However all sounds derive from the same source which is the recording of a train. The ways of recording and the sound world alone, can be seen as a cordial greeting to the financiers of electronic music.

Recording of Wilfried Jentzsch's Paysages V. This work is part of a series of works called the "Paysage Cycle" which are pieces for solo instruments and tape. This work focuses on the violin and explores the different interactions between the violin and tape.

This piece makes use of digitally recorded, processed, and edited acoustic sounds to control speech sounds as primary compositional materials. The processed whispers and vocal fry are arranged along a vowel scale from /u/ to /i/. The piece plays with and against this scale. Each sung cwal is consistently presented in a chord the ambitus of which is directly proportional to the bandwidth of the vowel itself. Thus/u/is always presented in a very narrow chord while/e/is a much wider chord. The pitch materials thus reinforce the organization of the vowels. The composer wishes to thank Katherine DeBoer whose voice appears in this piece and Fred Haas and Jon Appleton for technical assistance.

Impromptu for tape was comissioned by the Experimental Studio of the Polish Radio in Warsaw in 1986. It was produced with the assitance of Barbara Makowska-Okon using electronic transformation as well as old fashioned techniques of tape splicing and manual tape speed control. The material was concrete and consisted of recorded sounds of instruments and crying chlidren.

Eclipse reflects the ongoing interest of the composer in evolutionary processes as models for musical ideas evolve simultaneously, but their evolution also reflects their interaction with each other. There are areas of predominance for the different musical entities and periods during which each is dormant. The large scale form of the 20 minute piece is in two halves of almost equal duration. The first half is itself in two parts during each of which a different type of musical element is predominant. In the second half of Eclipse there are more struggles for predominance among the materials.

Steinelied (song of stones) is the only composition where I used exclusively synthetic sounds, which were produced on a VAX in the studio EMS (Stockholm 1986). The meaning of the title is that the chips, the crystals of silicium, namely the stones try to sing and to show absurd emotions. For the frequencies of the musical intervals I had choosen (with one exception) prime numbers, so that all intervals are "incorrect" from the point of perfect tuning.

"Hapsis" is a cello room in its own right. This one indeed is present not only on stage, but also through transformations carried out using digital means, exclusive material of the band. These transformations are not radical, it was not for me, thanks to virtuoso manipulations to "reinvent" the cello, but on the contrary to constantly keep the imprint by the development of some of its characteristics. No unheard sounds, but the meeting between a cello and his double and a constant concern for balance between the two for what I hope to be a small tribute to this instrument. Work done at the INA-GRM in Paris.

Aeotearoa is the original Maori name for "the country of the long white cloud". The singing of these unique birds was recorded in New Zealand, then transferred to a digital recording and processed at the EMS of the University of Texas at Austin. 1) The Kokako is native to New Zealand and normally lives in the rain forest of the coast. His song perhaps evokes the oboe d'amour. It consists of a series of motifs, unique by the bird. Here the composer was particularly struck by the motif that ends with a rising quintile and has used it a lot in this movement. These motifs are sung here and there, sometimes with variations of rhythm and arrangement of notes, but always followed by a pause as if, perhaps Kokako was waiting for an answer. These long breaks determined the shape of this movement. After a while the bird gets an answer, maybe a little different from what he expected. Kokako is one of the endangered species. Thanks to the careful protection of the New Zealand government, it seems that he can be saved. 2) The bell bird lives mostly in New Zealand. At the first meeting, it may seem like …

"... no, it's not a joke, Sir. It's not a joke as it's not cinematic music from a sinister movie. It's my imperfect tribute to the perfect composer who was always capable of seeing things as they are: neither funny nor tragic, or if you prefer, funny and tragic at the same time. It is my tribute to his wisdom which - yes, I must admit - is difficult to attain. I always come back to Mozart when this trivial dialectic is too apparent in my life. This time I did the same. It helped me. It made me understand that when everything falls apart, there is always Kyrie eleison left. You are not serious, Sir, are you? You are not seriously serious? I like Mozart. I do like Mozart. And he was not. No, it's not a joke. It's not cinematic music either. It is a piece of my music, it's a piece of his music. And... don't be too serious; it ain't gonna work, Sir. It ain't gonna work..." Excerpts from an unwritten letter Farewell Variations on a Theme by Mozart was composed at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, Stanford University, and was awarded …

Recording of Stanisław Krupowicz's Half Way Through.

"Litanéa" is an anagram of Electroacoustic Litanies. An exaggerated desire for possession of articulated sound material (down to the microscopic level) is not without the risk of developing a rational, even scientific, mind. In music, this exaggeration leads to a state of mind that may dry up in his desire for absolute possession of the material. A certain part of the periodicity must be left to the music (which does not belong to the composer) otherwise the sound can not exist. Litanies are of all times and all countries, and if they have been a form of religious expression calming the mind, creating a self-hypnotism beneficial on the psychological level, it has become clear to apply this musical form to the new technology of electroacoustic music. What is the point of these phonemic and vocal sounds? Probably first the rhythm of words (this pseudo-periodic rhythm that we find in all music) in cycles, like the planets in their regular races in the universe, then the stamped value of these words ( the timbre that makes the man for the musician). Make me hear your voice and I will know who you are, or rather who you are not (in the …

Work done in 1986. The material of the band comes from controlled improvisations of a guitarist. It was mainly transformed by a Serge synthesizer. After composing the band part, Laakso composed a live guitar part that includes some small movements of freedom for the performer. The work was done in close collaboration with guitarist Seppo Siirala who also played the solo guitar part on this band. Technical assistant Juhani Liimatainen.