A Desperate Serenity

In the early days of photography, the camera wasn't considered a tool for artistic expression — it was simply a means of recording images on film. Likewise, the original function of the sound recording studio was simply to faithfully record acoustic sound sources.

In "A Desperate Serenity", which marks the premier collaboration of Tim Story and Dwight Ashley, the recording studio itself is integral to creative expression: the studio becomes a musical instrument in its own right.

"Both Tim and I use the studio as our primary 'instrument'," says Ashley, "experimenting with textures, ambience, and heavy processing to invent our own sound palette. It's not just the art of the music, but the art of the studio."

For Story and Ashley, "A Desperate Serenity" was a collaboration that enabled both artists to make a departure from their usual work styles-to turn tables and switch roles..

"I liked where Dwight was coming from," says Story.

"Dwight is interested in soundscapes and textures — he's a true experimentalist. As we worked together, we tended to reverse roles. As it turned out, I had the chance to do a lot of experimentation, while Dwight would make some of the beds that he thought I would like to work on. Often Dwight would play what I had written, and vice versa." "I had written a series of compositions for my wife, Paula," says Ashley, "that I called Fan Music. At the time she was working in a design studio where the equipment, air conditioners, and fans created such an intense level of noise that it cancelled out an entire range of tones from the music they listened to. I wrote Fan Music specifically for that environment. It had a liquid sort of quality which utilized sounds that incorporated the environmental noise into the piece. It became very audible. Tim heard it and liked the dark, 'drift' sound — and that became the impetus for our collaboration" (A track from Fan Music evolved into this album's Rain Without Reason.")

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