“Is There..." is a six part electroacoustic suite that I composed and recorded between March and June of 1997 under the alias of Julius Crab. First premiered on July 17th 1997, the initial impetus for starting this piece came after hearing a performance of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Hymnen at Cardiff University several months earlier which opened me up to some electroacoustic compositional possibilities.  However the initial musical inspiration for this piece was somewhere between the Aphex Twin's early ambient works and Steve Reich's 1960s experimental tape loop phasing pieces such as "Come Out”. 

The music makes use of various digital loops of acoustic recordings played back with subtle shifts in speed to create phasing and delay feedback on the edge of breaking up into distortion. Added to this was improvised live studio effects processing, guitar sounds, drum machine manipulation and mixed in found sounds and samples taken from short wave radio, including various number stations. These elements were combined in a live mixing performance that was captured on DAT. The result is a mix of dark, eerie, and hypnotic atmospheres with incredibly intense Sci-Fi sound collages, and can be thought of as a spooky companion piece to the Worlds Beyond Cause album which came out at the same time.