Fin-estra was recorded at the Experimental Music Studios of Finnish Radio, Helsinki, where I spent a year on a Government scholarship. It was revised at the studios of the Institute of Sonology at the University of Utrecht, Holland.

Studio transformations of a recording of my All the Rage for symphony orchestra, accompanied by the sound of children playing outside the studio window.
Fin: Finland.
estra: orch-estra.
Finestra, fenetre: window.

The Piano Suite was composed whilst studying composition at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. The second movement was composed in a hotel room in Paris, away from a piano. It incorporates some 12-tone techniques and pays its conscious respects to Debussy. Melody in the third movement is derived from the name Dominique, using middle C as the letter A. Using the same idea (not an original one) the name Annick is also buried in the second movement. You can work out the surnames if you have that kind of brain.

Originally this piece was based around an interview with a 130year old drug addict, recorded off Irish national radio. When I asked for permission to use the recording I had made I was refused, so my flat-mate Johnny Robinson and I re-constructed an imaginary interview to replace the radio one. It is one of the very first tape pieces I composed.

Human beings experience two types of sleep, which are categorised by the eye movements associated with them: REM (Rapid Eye Movement or dream sleep) and non-REM. In REM sleep, beneath the eyelids, the eyes move around just as if their owner were wide awake and watching something. The piece is constructed in eleven seamless sections, which I called: Mix 1 (overture), Beach 1, Mix 2 (at 6’49), Beach 2, Edit 1 (at 11’55), Edit 2 (this is where I placed the track split to break up the 30 minutes), Voice improvisation, Mix 3 (related to Mix 2), Bedroom 1, Mix 4 (which arrives back to the end of Beach 1), Bedroom 2. Also, woven into the piece are dozens of aural déjà vu moments, where sounds heard before re-appear in different contexts.

Rapid Eye Movements was awarded a First Mention at the 1981 Bourges competition, France.

Awards

• First Mention, Electroacoustic Program Music Prize, 9th Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition 1981, Bourges (Cher, France)