“The album is about perpetual light and sound, an endless loop of crashing waves...”

"To get inside the sound, play this record through loudspeakers and swim in those waves, effortlessly, the 'acid test' is to join the flow of electrons."

The project began with a series of sessions and an unusually silent music building during the spring of 2019 and into the fall of 2020 with the prototype Buchla synthesizer (commissioned by the San Francisco Tape Music Center, completed by 1964-5).

“I was not looking for a specific sound, but I wished to explore the intrinsic sound characteristics of the hand-wired electronic circuits inside this, now iconic, instrument,” Xopher recalls.

“One of the key features of this instrument is the control voltage sequencers, of which I deliberately did not make use. There is no keyboard either, and I did not use either the touch sensitive interface or any amplitude envelopes.”

“Another interesting aspect of this instrument is a lack of filters, so it is basically always producing the full frequency range of the oscillators. The tunings were speculations adjusted and arrived at by ear. I noticed a great level of movement with these sounds, leading me to imagine this instrument is, in a sense, leading its own life.

Other sound sources on this album are heavily processed 12-string guitar, and, to a far greater degree, chords created by image-to-sound synthesis, which I refer to as ‘photosynthesis,’ using a version of Xenakis’s UPIC software to convert photographs of light reflecting off the Pacific Ocean into sound waves. So, in total, there are three instruments or sound sources. The album cover itself proves some of the chords heard toward the close of side A track, ‘Absolute Phase.’”

A past collaborator with visionary American composer Maryanne Amacher and legendary Polish composer Zbigniew Karkowski, Xopher builds his experiments in electronic sound from a basis in painting (including the artwork for Lux Perpetua), photography, and film and through an interest in electronic circuits, going back to building radios and homemade circuits as a kid.

Davidson has built and explored the sound world of a homebrew modular synthesizer comprised of surplus laboratory equipment: various oscillators, pulse generators, filters and an analog computer. Today’s release follows Xopher’s earlier albums, released on labels like Auscultare Research, Artifact Recordings, Asphodel, SIRR Records, Sub Rosa, Antifrost, and Resipiscent, and are considered some of the most sophisticated and cutting edge documents of experimental composition.