"I wrote this song "Contrasts" in 1964. I was still in high school at the time. That was my idea of syncretic music which was a forerunner to what they eventually called fusion. I recorded it first on an album, which is very hard to get, entitled "Barry Miles Presents His Syncretic Compositions." It was recorded live at Princeton University when I was a freshman there in 1966. There were some great musicians on it including Lew Soloff, Robin Kenyatta and Walter Booker on bass. That song was one of my early fusion pieces. Syncretic is a term that came out of the "Renaissance Period" developed by Pico della Mirandola. The idea was to be able to fuse some of the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato into a different philosophy using the elements of earlier philosophies. You took different elements of music that you've heard throughout your life and fuse that together to form your own personal sound."