In late November, we released our first album as Synflict on the Petcord netlabel. It was noticed by several people and even featured in Mark Stolk’s NTNS radio programme on Stillstream. This of course is quite pleasant for us and encourages us to continue with future releases. Prismatine was not planned this way from the beginning. In fact, there was no plan at all to expand our efforts to include music into our cooperation. Rather, there were some unfinished drafts of what might have become another album by Marco. One day in September, whilst working on Stig Inge Oy’s cover, he mentioned those sketches he had recorded and asked me about my opinion and whether there would be something that could be done about them. I found them interesting as a basis to get started with and so I suggested to combine these bits to some kind of remix. As time went by, I found it easier to include my own audio sources and work things out more thoroughly, which resulted in actual compositions. Marco in return liked those efforts and contributed more audio sources of his and by that moment it became clear that this project should be called Synflict, because it followed the same modus operandi we had for our graphic related work.

Team efforts within electroacoustic music seems rather unusual, but in our personal experience it can result in work of a much higher quality than the single individuals involved would be capable of. I think this might have to do with the review process and the fact that the presence of another person also means doing things differently or in unusual ways. We for ourselves might not think of another person’s strategy, but extending the horizon results in a greater pool of possibilities. There are simply more alternatives to choose from and through criticism, we do not get away with negligence or inconsistency in our ideas as easily as we could if we worked on our own. Surely that requires taking criticism and accepting another person’s point of view in the first place. Perhaps also recognising that one might be wrong with one’s way of doing things and that the other person may provide a better alternative solution to a problem. Not everyone is capable of doing that, because that would equate to giving in and exhibiting weakness (which it is not, provided the other person does not try to play mind games).

Of course we have plans for a follow up release. Marco has even started working on a cover draft, and thus it seems likely that music activities will resume once I completed all the website updates I had in mind for the rest of the week.