A series of three pieces/suites documenting David Behrman's evolved interactive computer music practice from the 1980s, featuring Rhys Chatham and Ben Neill (trumpet/mutantrumpet), Fluxus mainstay Takehisa Kosugi (violin), and Behrman himself on electronics. This essential recording captures Behrman's mature work with listening machines: thickly layered liquid sounds created through a complex computer music system which absorbs, actually hears, the sounds of instrumentalists, then plays off their improvisations with its own synthesized reactions.

The system consists of pitch sensors (ears with which it listens to the performing musicians), various music synthesizers (some homemade), a computer graphics color video display and a personal computer. Heavy period-synth float with bare accompaniment, thankfully just-pre DX-7.

Leapday Night and Interspecies Smalltalk are sets of compositions for instrumental performers and Behrman's interactive computer system, designed and assembled during the 1980s. Each composition is built upon a computer program governing interaction between performers and the system, creating situations rather than set pieces. The performers have options rather than instructions, and the exploration of each situation as it unfolds is up to them. Leapday Night was developed in the course of rehearsals and performances with Ben Neill and Rhys Chatham from 1983 to 1986. The interplay between Neill's mutantrumpet (his own invention, a hybrid electroacoustic brass instrument with multiple bells) and Chatham's trumpet creates shifting harmonic fields that the computer system responds to with its own synthesized textures, building dense layers of interaction where human intention and algorithmic response become inseparable.

Interspecies Smalltalk was commissioned by John Cage and Merce Cunningham as music for the 1984 Cunningham Dance Company repertory work Pictures, and was made for performance by Takehisa Kosugi. The title suggests Behrman's conceptual framework: communication between species, human and machine engaged in genuine conversation rather than master-slave relationship. Kosugi's violin explorations trigger the system's responses, creating an evolving sonic environment that feels simultaneously composed and spontaneous.

A Traveler's Dream Journal completes this trilogy of interactive works, further documenting Behrman's unique approach to composition as the design of responsive environments rather than fixed structures. His systems listen, remember, and react, creating music that emerges from the meeting of human creativity and computational logic.

This recording stands as essential documentation of 1980s interactive computer music, capturing a pivotal moment when desktop computing power first allowed real-time analysis and response to acoustic performance. Behrman's handmade circuits and elegant programming created musical possibilities that remain fresh and inspiring decades later.