While Lost Atlantis uses Plato’s account of the Atlantis legend as programmatic background, the music itself is concerned not so much with specific portrayals of places or events but rather with interpretations of impressions. In a more personal sense, Atlantis is the past that never was and the future that can never be. I believe that my reasons for composing Lost Atlantis are best expressed by the words of the poet Robert Lowell: “I want to make something imagined, not recalled.”
"Few are the composers who truly mastered Buchla1s innovative instruments and the quadraphonic electroacoustic repertoire has been all but lost, so this CD is a very welcome release, both in terms of music history and listening enjoyment, for these two works remain fascinating, regardless of how they were conceived… The music is imbued with mystery, its reliance on non-melodic material empowering it with an ageless appeal that could as well be ancient. Schrader makes use of a wide palette of tones and textures, and his sense of space and drama create a mysterious place in which the listener is eager to loose himself or herself. Recommended." Francois Couture - All Music Guide
"Barry Schrader’s Lost Atlantis reveals Schrader as a composer born to the electronic medium. He paints with veiled and mysterious tone colors, creates descending sine-tone scales of exquisite delicacy and spins out dramatic crescendos climaxing in peaks of brassy brilliance. He generates sequenced rhythms with various percussive envelopes: woodlike clacks, hollow drum sounds, giant xylophones and steel drums." Philip Springer - The Los Angeles Times
