The pieces on this CD evolved quite separately and yet, with hindsight, you can detect several fundamental similarities. One of the core themes running through how I compose is combining written notation with electronic sounds, which developed when I started working with electronics in 1992. It is an extremely rich and relatively unexplored terrain, opening up the discovery of a great wealth of new spaces.

Another important aspect is the close cooperation I have with the musicians I write for. The specific playing style of these musicians, with whom I have worked since the 1970s, has left its imprint on the compositions. You could even say that I did not produce these pieces single-handedly. My collaboration with writer Ken Hollings also fits this context. He wrote the libretto for our opera Bethlehem Hospital, and since then we have worked on a range of projects, including Glorious Stranger. The close cooperation with certain musicians links back to my pop background when I played in bands.

1. Camera Obscura (2000)

In this piece I tried to go beyond other pieces I previously wrote for pianist Gerard Bouwhuis. The inspiration for composing Camera Obscura, apart from his piano style, was derived from sample CDs. On one of these CDs I heard a sequence of chords that had simply been strung together as examples of e-pianos and orchestral hits, but I was fascinated by the interesting sequence of pitch and transformed it into an abstract system of notes, allowing me to compose the piece. I didn't use the sounds from the sample CD. All the sounds in this piece are derived from long and intense sessions with a combination of analogue and digital equipment that rendered the desired result after working on them for a while.

2. Glorious Stranger (1999)

Glorious Stranger evolved from a project for the VPRO's Moondive programme (in Paradiso, Amsterdam, June 1999).

Ken Hollings: "The text for Glorious Stranger owes its origins to a screening of The Trip, an old Roger Corman movie, which Huib and I both attended in London. We particularly liked the scene where the main character, played by Peter Fonda, encounters a woman in an LA Laundromat while high on LSD: neither of them knows what to make of the other. It seemed to us that the best way to convey that sense of urban delirium, that feeling of a hostile environment slowly invading your consciousness, was in science-fiction terms. For me, the damaged cyborg narrating Glorious Stranger expresses the creeping awareness that we no longer move through the city, but that the city is now moving through us."

The intermingling of man and machine is audible in the minimalist electronic distortion of the narrator's voice; the sounds in the piece seek to emulate a science-fiction atmosphere.

3. Blue Distance (2005)

In the work Blue Distance, Peter van Bergen's distinct playing style greatly influenced the outcome. The angular, hard lines refer to his playing style and articulation. Contrary to Glorious Stranger, for instance, the electronics have a more subordinate role, where they act more like a textural backdrop against which melodic phrases can be heard. It was this background concept that gave me the idea for the long, stretched-out rather sparse minor chord, which then seems to dissolve into a pseudo univocal sound of saxophone and electronics. It is the final uniting of instrument and electronic sound, bridging the Distance.

4. Lake Disappointment (2003)

Lake Disappointment is related to Camera Obscura, not because of its sound or form, but owing to the fact that both pieces have a sample CD as their base. However, in this piece I do use the samples of a Farfisa organ, much like the remnants of a tonal signal from an instrument where the remaining keys have been sold off. The basic sound in this piece was shaped by noises I got from an antiquated Korg synthesizer. The form, which consciously avoids action, was inspired by the title: a barren, searing-hot salty desert at the end of the world.