"Phoenix-like out of the clammy, chaotic historical debris, the most ethereal, unearthly music began to crystallise.
" . . .  Alternatively angelic, then wailing and caterwauling, women's voices conjured reincarnated whispers of lives forgotten, the aural rebirthing of death-gods and frightened huddled victims among music so ingenious as to be beyond language."
--Stewart DAWES X-PRESS Magazine 525, 6 March 1997

The Composition

The seven individual movements of Opening of the Mouth overlap and are embedded in a continuous electronic manipulation of the ensemble performance. This is achieved, principally, through the use of an Ensoniq EPS-16+ sampler, whose sounds are to be processed using the `Lick Machine´ software developed at STEIM, Amsterdam:

1.	Landschaft mit Urnenwesen on tape	20'
2.	Engführung I for two singers, full ensemble and electronics, including abglanzbeladen  . . .  auseinandergeschrieben for percussion, and CHARON for bass clarinet	15'
3.	Largo for soprano, koto and violoncello	5'30
4.	Schneebett for two singers, bass recorder, hardanger fiddle, flute and percussion	7'30
5.	Zungenentwürzeln on tape	5'
6.	Tenebrae for mezzosoprano, electric guitar, percussion and electronics	7'
7.	Engführung II for two singers, full ensemble and electronics, including knospend-gespaltener for clarinet in C, air for violin, and von hinter dem Schmerz for violoncello	25'

"The effect of this  . . .  is music that is harsh, dissonant, ugly and wretched--a hymn to the disorder of a universe where ugly events have lain buried, only to be released in pain.
"It seems at times that Barrett has distilled all the anguish of the world into a work that is perverse, disturbing and confronting."
--Ron BANKS, The West Australian 5 March 1997

" . . .  although the music has sometimes has the glittering energy of the Elision sound, the effect is less full and less busy than Barrett's previous Elision piece, negatives. The sound is more spare, more deserted, and sometimes more static, with long, sustained notes enlivened by figuration: the rhetoric more cool, distant and ritualistic."
--Peter McCALLUM Sydney Morning Herald 11 March 1997