For his piece "Extremités Lointaines", Hans Tutschku uses the sounds of big cities in Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand, as well as church and temple music and the music of singing kids.
extrémités lointaines uses recordings I made during a four week concert tour in Asia in summer 1997. In Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand I recorded the sounds of the big cities, church and temple music as well as singing kids. In the studio all the sounds were treated primarily with real-time granular synthesis. Filters and cross synthesis were applied to the spectrum of sounds to make continuous changes between different sources. The piece is structured in 15 parts, describing different places and atmospheres. For many years I have been seeking an integration of vocal and instrumental sounds in my electroacoustic compositions. At the same time these sources are related to their cultural context and sound environment. In extrémités lointaines I try to combine the sources with their cultural context and I move between four countries. The intensity of impressions I experienced during the trip leads to a very dense compositional structure. By the use of real-time granular synthesis, which was controlled either by compositional rules, set up in MAX, or by hand - by "playing" an faderbox and listening to the results - all recordings were cut into tiny pieces and reassembled with many new relationships between the sources.  

Hans Tutschku (D), born 1966, studied electroacoustic composition, accompanying Karlheinz Stockhausen on several concert tours to study "sound-direction" with him. At the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, he developed several computer programs for sound transformation related to specific compositional purposes. Hans Tutschku has composed tape pieces, works for live musicians with tape and/or live electronics, as well as theatre, ballet, and ilm music. Since 1997 Hans Tutschku teaches at IRCAM (Paris).