Fantasmata (‘Ghosts’ in Greek), is a work that explores the sound and rhythmic qualities of the Japanese language (i.e. heightened speech and chanting). The text, isolated words and short phrases taken from a short story The Mirror by the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, is the generative power for the entire piece. Each word is associated with a unique music section, tailored around the intrinsic rhythmic and acoustic properties of the text. The resulting textual/musical organisation, despite its loose logical connection, shapes a notional thread unified under the archetypal ideas of surprise, anxiety, fear or relief. Thus, Fantasmata is not just a descriptive work about ghosts, but a personal game of fugitive associations, both textual and musical.