★Another Timbre
Spiral Inputs
Four beautifully crafted improvisations by an exceptional European trio: French pianist Sophie Agnel, French saxophonist Bertrand Gauguet, and German sound artist Andrea Neumann. Recorded between 2008 and 2010 at various locations in France – La Filature in Mulhouse, La Maison de la Musique in Le Garric, and Bibliothèque Grand'Rue in Mulhouse – Spiral Inputs documents performances using a spatialized sound system developed by Benjamin Maumus, which had the effect of troubling the musicians' sens…
The Middle Distance
Trio improvisations for two pianos and double bass
And We Disappear
The Sealed Knot—Burkhard Beins (percussion, objects), Rhodri Davies (pedal harp, e-bow), Mark Wastell (double bass, bow, beaters)—are what Clive Bell in The Wire calls "one of the great free improvisation groups, comparable to the classic 1980s SME line-up of John Stevens, Nigel Coombes and Roger Smith for edge-of-your-seat attentiveness and sheer inter-group telepathy." This single 40-minute piece, recorded live at the Ear We Are Festival in Biel, Switzerland in February 2007, captures the trio…
Empty Matter
Lucio Capece (soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, preparations, sruti box) and Lee Patterson (CD players, pick-ups, e-bowed springrods, springplate, hazelnuts) recorded these eight pieces in what Norman Records describes as "absolutely beautiful music" where "two masters of tiny sounds meet up." Capece approaches his reeds "more as tubes for breath than as traditional 'instruments,'" while Patterson uses all sorts of sound processes—including amplifying burning hazelnuts.
Nick Cain in The Wire not…
Arethusa
Wade Matthews (software synthesis, manipulated field recordings) and Stéphane Rives (soprano saxophone) recorded these four pieces in Madrid in July 2008, creating music that speaks to transformation, identity, and the improviser's paradox. The album takes its name from Ovid's tale of Arethusa—a nymph fleeing the river god Alpheus who, in attempting to escape change, becomes water itself. As Matthews writes in his liner notes, "in her quest to remain herself, she has become exactly what she fled…
Maniera
With yet another striking and forward-thinking work of contemporary composition, Another Timbre returns with “Maniera”, their second outing with the Italian composer, Marco Baldini, following on from last year's brilliant “Vesperi” which sold out within weeks. Comprising seven works for various configurations of string ensemble, masterfully executed by Apartment House, that nod across time toward Italian polyphonic compositions of the 16th and early 17th centuries, the diverse history of Minimal…
Distant Musics
American composer Paul Paccione makes a welcome return to recording with this portrait album featuring five chamber works originally composed between 1980 and 1990, all performed by the acclaimed Apartment House ensemble. Born in New York in 1952, Paccione studied with legendary minimalist pioneer Harley Gaber and later at the University of Iowa, developing a distinctive voice deeply influenced by Morton Feldman, John Cage, and Anton Webern.
The album includes Exit Music for string trio, Gridwor…
shades
Boston-based composer Nomi Epstein makes her debut on Another Timbre with this portrait album featuring three chamber works composed between 2011 and 2023. Influenced by the New York School, Fluxus, Pauline Oliveros's Sonic Meditations, and the Wandelweiser collective, Epstein has developed a distinctive compositional voice centered on sonic fragility and textural subtlety.
The album opens with the title piece shades, a 20-minute string quartet written specifically for Apartment House in 2023. T…
Things that Happen Again
Things that Happen Again offers a panoramic entry point into the lucid, evolving world of Paul Newland. Recorded by Apartment House at Goldsmiths in 2023, the album presents compositions written across a fourteen-year span. The title alludes to Newland’s fascination with recurrence and reworking - tracks such as “Difference is Everywhere (altered again)” or “Things That Happen Again (again)” are not only marked by repetition but by acts of subtle reinvention, echoing Newland's habit of dismantli…
Screens
British composer Frank Denyer (born London, 1943) presents an extraordinary collection of five works spanning nearly fifty years of creative activity, performed by the Octandre Ensemble conducted by Jon Hargreaves. This release, recorded at the Menuhin School in Surrey in September 2022, serves as a landmark document of one of the most original voices in contemporary music.
The album includes Broken Music (1990) featuring a bewildering array of instruments including flute, piccolo, crow call, me…
A History of Musical Pitch
This album contains three works by Seamus Cater, including his creative response to the work of Alexander John Ellis (1814-1890), who presented a paper 'The History of Musical Pitch' to the Royal Society in 1880. Ellis was a mathematician, collector, philologist and musical enthusiast, who spent a lot of time measuring the exact frequencies of contemporary and ancient musical instruments, and so is remembered as one of the founders of comparative musicology. Two of the pieces on the disc are 're…
parallaxis forma
Three vocal works recorded between 2014 and 2020 reveal the Berlin-based American composer's singular approach to voice as spectral instrument. Lotte Betts-Dean, Explore Ensemble, and Exaudi navigate Lamb's radiant harmonic language where phonemes replace text, vowel sounds emphasize overtone clusters, and the human voice blends seamlessly with bowed strings shifting between pure tone and noise.
color residua opens with four sections where composite melodies emerge through slow hocket between si…
Translucent Harmonies
New York-based duo andPlay – violinist Maya Bennardo and violist Hannah Levinson – present two extended works exploring the sonic possibilities of just intonation tuning systems. Both pieces were commissioned for andPlay's concert series Translucent Harmonies and premiered in 2018.
Catherine Lamb's Prisma Interius VIII (Melodic Duo) (22 minutes) strips her Prisma Interius series down to its bare essence, removing the electronic spectral resonance of earlier versions. Here, violin and viola plot …
String Trio
A 51-minute journey through sound that Swiss composer Jürg Frey describes as "a (maybe even perfect) balance between anonymity and personality." Originally commissioned by Concertgebouw Brugge and premiered at the 2019 SLOW Festival, this String Trio underwent extensive revision before Apartment House brought it to its "final destination" in this first recording. Frey's compositional process defies system – everything emerges slowly through what he calls "a slow but natural process which I can't…
A Dread of Voids
Melbourne-born composer Anthony Pateras presents two substantial chamber works emerging from distinct contexts yet unified by his singular approach to electro-acoustic orchestration. Born to Macedonian immigrants in the late 1970s, Pateras has built a 25-year career spanning collaborations with John Zorn's Tzadik, Peter Rehberg's Editions Mego, and commissions from INA-GRM.
Patterned Language (19 minutes) unfolds from a live performance at Melbourne's Church of All Nations in November 2022. Comm…
Violin and String Quartet
A double CD for one of the late monuments by Morton Feldman: Violin and String Quartet, a 140-minute work composed in 1985, two years before the American composer's death. A work of extreme maturity, in which Feldman pushes his aesthetics of duration and sonic rarefaction to their ultimate consequences, creating a suspended space-time where every sound acquires an almost physical presence.
Apartment House – the London-based ensemble specialized in experimental and minimalist repertoire – offers …
Echo Stane
Nine solos for Hardanger fiddle that trace a fascinating journey between tradition and experimentation, composed and performed by Sarah-Jane Summers, a virtuosic Scottish musician based in Norway. With Echo Stane, Summers employs the Hardanger fiddle – the national instrument of her adopted country – as a bridge across the North Sea, connecting the musical heritage of the Scottish Highlands with Norwegian folk traditions while pushing both toward the avant-garde.
Summers grew up in rural Inverne…
Natural World
Natural World by Laurence Crane offers an expansive and quietly subversive study in sonic ecology, blending piano, soprano, and field recordings. Written for Juliet Fraser and Mark Knoop, the piece unfolds over three movements, combining encyclopedic texts, birdsong, and elemental musical motives in a measured fifty-five-minute reflection on beauty and environmental fragility.
Evening Star, Vesper Bell
Evening Star, Vesper Bell by Magnus Granberg with Apartment House is a nearly hour-long meditation bridging composed structures and improvisational nuances. Drawing on remnants from Schubert and Cole Porter, the ensemble crafts an intricate tapestry of sound, embracing openness, patience, and detailed interplay. It is a work that rewards repeated, attentive listening and the discovery of subtle, shifting textures.
Neha
Neha is an album by Adrián Demoč featuring the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra and Ostrava New Orchestra. Each work extends beyond twenty-five minutes, exploring soft layers of orchestral sound, calmly repeating motifs, and silences that articulate the music’s emotional contour. The pieces are defined by their meditative atmosphere and gradual, unforced transformations.