★Another Timbre
O a | F g
Teodora Stepančić writes "music that doesn't try to draw attention to itself." The Serbian-born, Brooklyn-based composer describes her aesthetic simply: "How much do I need to add to everything that I hear?" These two chamber works for Ordinary Affects—written five years apart, yet fitting together with eerie logic—make a persuasive case for restraint.
OA (2018) and FG (2023) share surface features with Wandelweiser repertoire: low volume, generous silences, slow pacing. But unexpected elements …
G o m b e r t
Seven beautiful, melancholic motets and a chanson by Renaissance composer Nicolas Gombert, arranged for instruments by James Weeks, who also composed the interludes. "One of the least expected and most beautiful records we are likely to hear this year." - Clive Bell
Towards a slowing of the past
Bryn Harrison writes music that deliberately disorients. The British composer—obsessed with "time, memory, and cyclic structures"—follows Feldman's lead, creating perceptual labyrinths where past bleeds into present and nothing stays quite where you expect. Towards a slowing of the past, a 45-minute tour de force for two pianos and electronics, achieves disorientation through sheer density: a whirlwind of notes that somehow maintains "delicacy and deftness of touch."
Mark Knoop and Roderick Chad…
Zamat
Adrián Demoč writes "gentle and soft, non-violent music." The Slovak composer, based in Spain, reduces chamber music down to near-monody—single melodic lines articulated through subtle timbral shifts and microtonal deviations. Zamat, his fourth Another Timbre release, presents three chamber works where Apartment House navigates music that moves "back and forth on the spot between a handful of notes." The title track—zamat means "velvet" in Slovak—deploys clarinet, bass clarinet, viola, and cello…
Flowers of Emptiness
"Maybe I'm like a still life painter," Linda Catlin Smith says, "looking at the same objects again and again over the years." Yet this survey of chamber works—spanning 1986 to 2024—shows a composer whose perspectives continually shift, finding something fresh in each iteration. Hers is "a compositional voice that never shouts, never draws undue attention to itself, yet creates music of compelling beauty." The Guardian awarded five stars, placing it #3 in their Top Classical Releases of 2024.
Apa…
Dawnings
Anglo-German composer Eden Lonsdale returns to Another Timbre with an ambitious double album that represents his most mature and expansive work to date. Following the critical success of Clear and Hazy Moons, Lonsdale presents five major compositions that explore the boundaries of chamber music through rigorous formal constraints, microtonal explorations, and an extraordinary attention to harmonic metamorphosis.
The first disc, performed by the acclaimed Apartment House, features three pieces fo…
Curva Triangulus
Catherine Lamb works at the boundary between perception and illusion. In Curva Triangulus (2018/21), the American composer takes Bridget Riley's geometric forms as starting point for "warping" Renaissance materials through geometric musical figures. The result is a 41-minute composition for eight instruments where the distinction between melody and harmony dissolves: one generates the other, rather than existing as separate entities.
The score demands an exceptional ensemble. Bern's Ensemble Pro…
Outermost Melodies
Ian Antonio discovered Jürg Frey via algorithm. About 15 years ago, SoundCloud kept leading him to the same piece, maybe Circular Music No. 2. "I wouldn't notice the piece starting but then realize I was in fact listening to it closely," he recalls. "The stillness and closeness and warmth were somewhat new to me." At the time, Antonio played "a lot of very loud and often very fast music" with groups like Wet Ink, Talujon, Zs, and Yarn/Wire. Frey's music was "very much the opposite."
This double …
Holde Träume, kehret wieder!
"Sweet dreams, come back!" The title, the last line of Matthäus von Collin's poem set by Schubert in 1825 as Nacht und Träume, suggests longing for night's return upon waking. Magnus Granberg's 2021 composition takes Schubert's song as departure point, fragmenting its rhythmic phrases into tiny cells and extracting tonal structures to create a new modal framework. The result exists at the intersection where composition meets improvisation, realized here in two versions across this double album.
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Control And Its Opposites
“Eighty minutes of trumpet/electronics and alto sax. Here, the length works in its favor. An advantage, oddly, to listening at home (and reading the back of the sleeve): You know it's 80 minutes long so you "read" it as such, as it's happening, sitting back a bit, seeking a wider focus. Wright gets nicely strident here and there, Coleman generally staying with breath tones early on, getting more vociferous later, Kasyansky hither and yon, doing a fine job integrating and coloring. There's a brea…
Meshes
2009 release ** "Two improvisations-one live, one without audience-by an Anglo-French trio of new voices from trombonist Forge, electronics artists Julian and cellist Papapostolou. The music is quiet and spacious....there is a wonderful sense of slowness to the music that suggests each sound, every contribution comes only after careful consideration."
Loiter Volcano
The excellently titled Loiter Volcano was a constant source of somewhat surprising pleasure the first time I listened. "Surprising" because the general attack leans a bit more toward efi (I suppose "post-efi" has been appropriate for a good while) than I normally care for. But this mix of electronics, percussion and cello simply filled the space in a manner that held me rapt throughout. As with the other release featuring Dumont, it's partially about the textures and their creative deployment bu…
Centre Of Mass (For Cymbal And Resonant Objects)
Solo improvisation for cymbal and rotating objects
Scrub
A duo improvisation recorded in an exhibition space with several of Max Eastley's sound sculptures, and next door to a park where a firework display was taking place...
A Life Saved By A Spider And Two Doves
Three extended improvisations recorded at the church of St. James the Great, North London, September 2007 - the first convocation of this unexpected quartet crossing different generations and playing styles. Max Eastley (arc - electro-acoustic monochord), Graham Halliwell (computer & electronics), Evan Parker (soprano saxophone) and Mark Wastell (tam-tam, metal percussion & harmonium) document a meeting of three generations of London free improvisation.
Parker has had a venerable presence as bot…
Endspace
Duo improvisations recorded at Goldsmiths College, London, July 2007. Angharad Davies (violin) and Tisha Mukarji (inside piano) - two of the most distinctive young improvisers on the UK scene - unite for their first recording as a duo. An entirely acoustic affair impossible to ignore the heritage that goes before such a recording of piano and violin: the slow pace of Feldman and the New York School, the grey austerity of the Wandelweiser collective echo through these five improvisations.
Davies …
Hum
Quartet improvisations recorded at London's Red Rose in June 2007. Rhodri Davies (harp & objects), Matt Davis (trumpet & electronics), Samantha Rebello (flute) and Bechir Saadé (bass clarinet) unite for intimately detailed collective sound explorations mining the lower boundaries of dynamics and densities. Davies and Davis are well-established improvisers; Rebello is a new name; Saadé is a member of the Lebanese improv scene along with Sharif Sehnaoui, Christine Sehnaoui, and Mazen Kerbaj.
It's …
Tasting
Recorded live at the June 2006 Jazz à Poitiers festival, this gem pairs two extraordinary musicians in an unusual and very welcome configuration. Phil Minton - the legendary British vocalist with decades of experience exploring the outer possibilities of the human voice - meets Sophie Agnel, one of the most interesting and original voices on today's scene, though still largely undiscovered given her small discography. Her approach to piano is truly surprising: a mysterious and fascinating mixtur…
Wanderer
Wanderer assembles eight sophisticated chamber pieces from Linda Catlin Smith, rendered by the ever-inventive Apartment House ensemble. Across this collection, Smith’s distinct voice emerges through piano, strings, winds, percussion, and brass, revealing an uncompressed sense of time and patience. Philip Thomas’s solo piano work offers gentle resonance and poised silence, while duos and quintets - performed with Mark Knoop, Mira Benjamin, Anton Lukoszevieze, Heather Roche, and others - bring nua…
Mouth To Mouth
Four compositions by the US-Chinese composer:
'Of Monsters' - Ingrid Lee, piano Merima Kljuko, accordion'Cells' - Ingrid Lee & Rowan Smith, amplified snare drums'Bead Spit' - Ingrid Lee, piano, Max Kutner, electric guitar, Tony Gennaro, percussion'Another' - Eric KM Clark & Andy Studer, violins, Heather Lockie, viola, Meldoy Yenn, cello, Jake Rosenzweig, bass & Tony Gennaro, vibraphone