double bass Klaus Janek
guitar Paul Khimasia Morgan
Material recorded in Berlin and Sussex.

The cocktail party effect is the phenomenon of being able to focus one’s auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli. This effect is what allows most people to “tune into” a single voice and “tune out” all others. It may also describe a similar phenomenon that occurs when one may immediately detect words of importance originating from unattended stimuli, for instance hearing one’s name in another conversation.