This composition, like the entire “chamber music” series by Steve Peters, originates exclusively from resonances extracted from empty spaces and rooms set to host site-specific sound installations. “Filtered light” was born from recordings of fourteen frequencies between 70 Hz and 3 kHz taken out of the University of New Mexico Art Museum, subdivided in 32 segments which “recombined randomly” in a four-channel setting. The composer recommends low playback volume for best results, and I definitely concur. This is first-rate backdrop music following ambient principles but also suitable for active listening, made of hardly traceable movements requiring silence, or at least a quiet environment, to be carefully valued in their unassuming wealth of gradations. Developing in an uninterrupted fluctuation one moment, in slightly uneven chiaroscuros the next, this billowing accumulation of processed whispers is just what the doctor ordered for concentrated absorption, his gentle touch on mental strain a much welcome break amidst pressuring circumstances. Peters, whose connection with “place, presence, perception, attention and duration” is way deeper than the average in a world of latecomers, is the holder of an exemplary and infrequently paralleled sympathy, which translates into psychological repercussion even in view of an apparently frail structural foundation.
– Massimo Ricci