Stéphane ROY Celso AGUIAR Jonathan NORTON Fernando LOPEZ-LEZCANO Nicholas HOPKINS Cem DURUÖZ (guitar in Ripples) Back to the Index

Nicky HIND Ripples Nicky Hind emerged as a composer with the 1987 release of the album Hindsight, a collection of compositions which combine atmospheric textures with (jazz) improvisation. He has since received commissions for acoustic and electro-acoustic media, and has worked in conjunction with dance, theatre, and video. In addition to Scotland„his home country„works have been performed in Germany, Australia, Japan, Argentina, Iceland, and the USA; and broadcast on national radio in the UK. The composition of Ripples was inspired by and is an attempt to realize in music, a transcendent experience I had, while floating on my back in a swimming pool. This was an outdoor pool at a motel situated in the "Organ Pipe Cactus" National Monument in Southern Arizona, very close to the Mexican border. It was late at night, and I was attempting to find out how long it would take for the water to become completely still, while I floated, as motionless as possible, staring up into a cloudless, star-filled sky. After some time, the water had become very calm, but it was not completely still, and it seemed that so long as I was breathing (even in slow, steady breaths), some ripples would be created, and that these ripples, reflecting back from the perimeter of the pool, would eventually return to me, denying me my wish for perfect stillness. After some more time, I realized that the closest I could get to this stillness, was to time my breathing with the reflection of the ripples, harmonizing myself with them and with the water which supported my body. This seemingly trivial experiment however, revealed to me a great truth: That so long as I am alive I cannot avoid action (even breathing is an action!), and that my every action will return to me in some form; harmony with my actions will tend to bring peace, and lack of harmony will increasingly perturb that peace. The experience was for me, a striking illustration of the nature of karma. In Ripples, the patterns and their transformations are in "harmony" with the stereo echo effect through which they pass, expanding their sonic, textural, and harmonic realities. I hope that the action of composing Ripples may somehow communicate the sense of harmony I felt that night...