On this album I’m attempting to give the listener access to this experience, what’s inside me and to the place that I connect to, as far as I possible can. One could say that it’s impossible to do that, it is impossible to give you the fullest access to my imagination and to what I hear as it happens. But what I can give you is some sense of what I feel, some sense of what I hear a split second before a melody hits me, and I can perhaps get your own imagination to play tricks on you.

In order to do this I’m putting what I hear under a magnifying glass. When you walk up to a stone — it’s grey and just sits there. But when you put a magnifying glass over it, suddenly the stone has texture, it’s got surface, it’s got history — it’s a world within a world. This is the kind of sight that I have when I look at a drone all the time. But I recognise that many people see drones the way I see a lump of rock. (Six lumps of rock — is that an album?!) So I’ve had to put in an artificial magnifying glass — in this case my voice and various production techniques which I’ve used to enhance the harmonics, the whispers of melodies that I’ve actually heard in these drones. I’ve listened to the harmonics and by playing with several arrangement psychologies and vocal approaches attempted to pull the listener in by singing what I’ve heard. But I’ve kept it very simple — this time I’m letting the drones speak.

Sheila Chandra 1996