Features three compositions from 1997-99. Parts centering around field recordings in forests, and creating a very dense and deep atmosphere, took about two years to complete. The cover of the CD as well as the text quotation from Thomas Pynchon's book Mason & Dixon point to his slightly mysterious view of nature.
G. Stefani's front cover photograph of plant layers in a friulian forest, the author's photograph of a circular formation of a liana's root in a similar forest correspond to the recordings used in the pieces 'Scrutto' and 'Secular Air'. Those that were made at the Hohemark (Taunus Hillside, Germany) were made close to an old Celtic settlement with sacrificial groves. A different perception of time (long, nearly motionless periods) established during field recordings in this forest with its intense history. The music reintegrates such recordings with others made in a similar hillside in Italy (Valli del Natisone, Friuli), also with a similarly intense history, as well as natural and electronically manipulated sound. In parts it is also characterized by periods in which arrangements change only in details.
'Scenes for Contraction', on the contrary, consists of totally different sound material, electronically modified to a big extent, organized in five rather short scenic parts. The sound spectrum here is sharp, straightforward, simpler than in 'Scrutto' and 'Secular Air', in which lots of facets of the single elements and their combinations can be discovered by intense, contemplative listening.
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