Following an initial period of excitement and artistic success, he had come to feel increasingly "isolated" and "exiled from the art world".

[8][9] It was at this time that he began immersing himself in a "wild unknown world of sound" and working on a "visual expression" of Shostakovich's music.

[8] He also regarded the series as an effort to find the "right connection" between music and painting – a problem that he thought had not been solved "even by Kandinsky".

[2] He also noted that the paintings incorporate iconography inspired by the pre-Columbian cultures of indigenous peoples of the Americas – a signature motif in Williams' work.

[14][15] In 2010, Leon Wainwright described the series as "rooted in a sensorial project" that explores the "tactility of vision" and reveals "the ability of music to create spatial depth that can be pictured and played with.