I am indebted to my colleague at the Swiss Computer Music Centre (as it was called then), Martin Neukom, whose impressive recordings of sounds from a metal foundry are the basic material of this piece. As is often the case, when the inspiration-material is so good, one hesitates to do anything at all, the music is already there, to add to it would be gilding the lily. Finally I decided to do the opposite. Where the original was overwhelmingly loud, my piece would be soft, where it was exceedingly dense, mine would be porous. I would make a piece of dots, of blotches, a pointillistic, dappled piece.
There are nine sections, each approximately a minute long. The sections are organised according to Abelian Form: sections 1, 5, and 9 are related, also sections 2 and 4, 3 and 7, 6 and 8. Just before the end we hear a foreign voice, a comment from the depths of the sea — a whale.