The title of the cd dates back to the mid 90s when I was travelling around Vietnam. One of the most impressive things there was meeting an American veteran soldier who had returned to the places of former glory. He was talking about the churches he bombed during the War, (high buildings are the best targets), with great enthusiasm and was extremely pleased to show us some of the ruins. When I decided to use some of the recordings I had made there for one of the pieces (# 2), I found "the pleasure of burning down churches" an appropriate title for this release. The 4 pieces were composed between April 2006 and January 2007. Some of the sounds came from my archives of unissued materials (especially from the mid 90's travel to Vietnam as heard in # 2), but most of the sounds were recorded in 2005/06. Thanks to Marc Behrens and Stephen Meixner for discussing details of the pieces and to Kouhei Matsunaga for taking part in one of the paper string actions as used on # 3. (RLW January 2007)