Experimental electronic collection
Seth Peter Clark · Electronic Works
Mantis
MANTIS is a fifteen-part sound collage designed to induce trance states in listeners. It is not background or “ambient” music; it has to be listened to fairly closely to work. MANTIS was realized using several different methods of sound synthesis. The principal synthesis technique was something I developed myself with some former students called Mutation Synthesis. This involves digitally switching between two or more simple waveforms at a rate faster than the frequency of either waveform. The simple waveshapes thereby morph into composite waveshapes and deliver complex harmonic spectra. Part II, MANTIS, utilizes 580 separate note statements, and is dedicated to Patty Liu, an old friend, in remembrance of meeting her on the 580 Freeway in Oakland.
Fifteen parts for focused listening.
This is not background music. Mantis is designed for close attention, using Mutation Synthesis and other electronic processes to create a fifteen-part sound collage intended to shift perception and induce trance-like states.
Official album description: MANTIS is a fifteen-part sound collage designed to induce trance states in listeners. It is not background or “ambient” music; it has to be listened to fairly closely to work. MANTIS was realized using several different methods of sound synthesis. The principal synthesis technique was something I developed myself with some former students called Mutation Synthesis. This involves digitally switching between two or more simple waveforms at a rate faster than the frequency of either waveform. The simple waveshapes thereby morph into composite waveshapes and deliver complex harmonic spectra. Part II, MANTIS, utilizes 580 separate note statements, and is dedicated to Patty Liu, an old friend, in remembrance of meeting her on the 580 Freeway in Oakland.
Mantis moves through several interlocking approaches to electronic composition. Mutation Synthesis creates complex recombinant waves by switching between simple waveforms at extraordinary speed. Granular Synthesis breaks sound into grains that can be scattered, layered, spatialized, or made to behave like particles moving through an impossible hourglass.
Elsewhere, Phase Vocoding, convolution, tape manipulation, sampling, CSOUND, MAX, and graphic composition transform ordinary source material into entirely new sonic objects. Breath becomes an unsettling landscape. Film dialogue becomes an auditory hall of mirrors. Repetitive structures turn noise into pattern, and pattern into an unexpected emotional language.
The album also carries a deeply personal center. The title work grew from Seth Peter Clark’s collaboration with Patty Liu and from their experiments with the synthesis method they called Mutation Synthesis. Other pieces remember friends, teachers, shared studios, old technologies, and creative paths that continued to change long after their original moments had passed.
Taken together, the collection is both laboratory and dream space: sometimes calm, sometimes abrasive, often surreal, and always concerned with what happens when sound is allowed to escape familiar musical expectations.
Enter the altered state.
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