"Our collaboration began in 2021 at a time when we shared artist-in-residence status at Elementstudion, home of Geiger Goteborg. Our shared interest in feedback electronics soon had us working and collaborating closely and we quickly found that our respective rigs were producing the sounds that the other wished themselves to create. And so in playing with Rasmus, I felt like my left hand had found the right.

From the start our goal was to explore balance, restraint and precision as well as to employ a level of discipline and focus within our playing that shows respect, not just for each other but for our audience too. Given the unstable and inherently unpredictable nature of our respective instruments this is no easy task. Feedback systems seldom work as you want them to. Very rarely do they behave the same way twice. As soon as we feel they are gaining the upper hand and taming the machine, they change the rules on us.

This though is part of the appeal - raw discovery and the element of surprise... fine when playing solo, but in playing with others it can also be an Achilles' heel. It can draw our attention away from our contribution to the whole and away from the soundworld being explored by our playing partner(s).

Rasmus and I are trying to work against this tendency. While not excluding the joy of discovery, we want to consciously maintain focus on what each other is creating and, using our ears and years of experience, steer the machines into gestures and expressions that complement the other: to create works that sound considered and composed, despite being always, always, an improvisational journey of discovery.

Ratios is then an experiment: an attempt to leave varying amounts of negative space in order to highlight the sounds uncovered. Not in a rigid, formal sense, but rather through our own, surely misguided and altered perception within the moment of creation. Any performer who has once been on a stage or in front of an audience will be acutely aware how a second of silence can feel like a minute, a minute like an hour. This is the perceptual phenomenon Rasmus and I were exploring in the following five compositions (loose agreements) explored on this disc.

Some experiments succeed, many fail. Whether we succeeded in our original goal is ultimately irrelevant. RATIOS stands alone, speaks for itself and exists in its own right, independent of original intentions."-Lee Noyes

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The Squid's Ear!