The project is founded on the idea that one portrays oneself and one’s surroundings — possibly unconsciously — through recordings. We may ask whether composers of one continent form a cultural unit? I find that, though we are not necessarily representative of a single native country as a cultural entity however local, site-specific or exotic, our cultural background is never-the-less mirrored when trying to relate to exotic sounds of another continent.

The project has thus challenged me to go beyond the safe resort of personal material and to seek relations in sounds that allow the combination and incorporation of disparate material from remote companions. During actual work I often imagined being at the locations of the recordings where I have never been. To my own positive surprise I realize that the origins of the sounds influenced how I treated them.

When choosing sounds I first looked for some that could match each of my own recordings (frog choir at night, rushes in the wind, music from the communion house). I choose Arctic terns (actually recorded in Iceland, but could have been at the South Pacific), Chilenian pifilca flutes, Brasilian church bells and a train rocking its way to God knows where. Next I combined the pairs in likely scenes and designed how they would change in a flow with a dreamlike associative character.