Album Liner Notes:
Spherical Harmonics reflects a love of early electronic music, when every sound and every instrument had to be built by hand, and artists were pioneers exploring new territory with no map.
Composer, sound and media artist Joseph Hyde has been fascinated by this music since childhood, with early influences being TV soundtracks from the radiophonic workshop and the more cosmic and psychedelic records in his parent’s vinyl collection. This music always seemed otherworldly, alien and futuristic. For this album he wanted to seek out these qualities and attempt his own journey into the sonic unknown.
With this in mind he has developed a unique sound world based around self-built analogue synthesizers and home-made software. This means there are no preset sounds, standardised rhythmic grids or even musical scales – everything was built from the ground up and based around simple mathematical ratios rather than traditional music theory. The result is a series of tone poems evoking imaginary landscapes, arranged as a journey into outer reaches and inner depths.
Below is a demo of my bespoke modular system, used to make much of the material here:
Additional Notes
- This album was released on Sheffield-based synth music label TruthTable in 2022
- It has since received considerable airplay on networks across Europe and the US
- Review in Electronic Sound magazine called it a ‘bullseye’ with a ‘blend of emotional warmth and pinpoint precision’