1992 release ** "I’ve long been interested in the extension of instrumental resources by electronic means, so when the Equale Quintet invited me to write a piece for them I decided to write in a part for a sixth player controlling a range of devices which would extend the sound of the five brass instruments. The title Equalisation is a slightly ironic reference to the technique, often used in rock music recording, of filtering a sound in certain ways to heighten its effect. Officially, the filtering is simply meant to make the output as equal to the input as possible but in fact the natural sounds of the instruments is often changed quite radically, and indeed, creatively.
In both Sonata and Equalisation, and indeed in all of my works like Mareas, Driftwood Cortege and The Transistor Radio of Saint Narcissus, I’ve been trying to create a coherent but flexible musical language in which consonant and dissonant intervals are given equal value. I think music today has reached a kind of plateau: almost anything is possible. But it still behoves the composer to forge a coherent expressive language out of all this multiplicity. In Equalisation and Sonata, I have attempted to find a language which is simple but which can articulate wide-ranging musical processes when necessary. What matters is not the means used, whether technological or traditional – in itself a distinction which should never have to be made – but the sonorous results." -Tim Souster