★Another Timbre
Jankélévitch Sextets
Jankélévitch Sextets brings together Antoine Beuger’s reductionist poetics and the responsive intelligence of Apartment House, resulting in a recording defined less by overt drama than by its expansive sense of space and attentive musicianship. Over the span of sixty-four minutes, Beuger crafts a patient tapestry for violin, viola, double bass, bassoon, bass clarinet, and accordion. Each instrument enters as if in dialogue, their lines arising not from thematic contrast but from a shared willing…
The way to go out
The Way to Go Out offers an absorbing journey through three interconnected pieces by Newton Armstrong, exploring themes of repetition, layering, and shifting musical focus inspired by visual art and landscapes. Performed by the Plus Minus Ensemble alongside Séverine Ballon, the album balances textural nuance and structural rigor, weaving together acoustic and electronic sounds with a fluid, measured pace that invites deep listening. Armstrong's fascination with the "in-between" moments - where l…
Stain Ballads
There is something disarming about the world conjured in Stain Ballads. Martin Arnold creates music for Apartment House that settles into the ear with an air of deceptive simplicity: four extended works - “Lutra,” “Stain Ballad,” “Trousers,” and “Slip” - move in slow, off-center arcs, each clothed in a soft-edged lyricism that never quite settles into resolution. Arnold’s notion of a “stain” isn’t merely suggestive of the accidental, but proposes a form where contour and color are indivisible. H…
Parallel Words
With Parallel Words, Eventless Plot compose as a true collective, crafting an album that drifts at the intersection of chamber music, electroacoustic experimentation, and subtle jazz inflections. The trio - Vasilis Liolios, Aris Giatas, and Yiannis Tsirikoglou - devise sound worlds marked by contradiction and hybridity. Across the album’s three substantial tracks, instrumental timbres and electronics run alongside each other, oscillating between a sense of tranquil detachment and mounting intens…
Monument of Diamonds
With Monument of Diamonds, Kraig Grady offers a singular entry in the field of microtonal composition, crafting a sound world as immersive as it is otherworldly. The piece, composed in 2020 and realized for a small orchestra of specially built or adapted brass and woodwinds, is structured around the Meta-Slendro tuning - a 17-pitch scale pioneered by Erv Wilson. This tuning infuses the entire work with a crystalline, unfamiliar resonance, letting every phrase and chord shimmer with a sense of sp…
Repetition of the Same Dream
Repetition of the same dream emerged from collaboration under unusual circumstances: during the early Covid-19 lockdown, Clara de Asis and Mara Winter found themselves together in Basel, using both a local church and a midnight tunnel to explore the limits of breath, resonance, and intuition. The album, spanning five works for flute, percussion, and electronics, is shaped as much by its resonant spaces and spontaneous method as by pre-composed material. The duo dissolves rigid lines between comp…
Hyazo
A new album from the trio who released Tse in 2016, and - along with violinist Angharad Davies - Awire in 2018. Three compositions of quiet and delicate beauty, two by Christoph Schiller, and the title track by Cyril Bondi.Cyril Bondi: Indian harmoniumPierre-Yves Martel: viola da gambaChristoph Schiller: spinet
Antifona
Following on from the wonderful "Cantilena", four new chamber works by the Paris-based Italian composer Giuliano d'Angiolini. Performers include Apartment House, Manuel Zurria, Mark Knoop and the composer.
Let Pass My Weary Guiltless Ghost
Let Pass My Weary Guiltless Ghost marks another chapter in Magnus Granberg’s ongoing exploration of the borderlands between improvisation and quietly radical chamber composition. Granberg draws from his background in saxophone and deep engagement with traditions spanning classical, folk, and the avant-garde, establishing a musical language marked by reserved urgency and gentle abstraction, performed by his dedicated ensemble Skogen.
The recording is structured to allow strings, clarinet, piano, …
Unfurling
Unfurling introduces a trio where established voices in contemporary experimental music - Angharad Davies, Klaus Lang, and Anton Lukoszevieze - are brought together in an environment shaped as much by deep listening as by compositional foresight. Born out of a residency and recorded during the intense yet open space of a single studio session, the album becomes a portrait of creative trust and shared focus. Throughout the 52-minute performance, each musician both asserts and dissolves their indi…
Unconscious Collections
Unconscious Collections emerges as a resonant dialogue between Tomás Cabado’s classical guitar and Christoph Schiller’s prepared spinet, both artists known for their work within experimental, microtonal, and Wandelweiser-inspired aesthetics. The album consists of pieces co-composed and performed by the duo, recorded during a period of close collaboration in Switzerland. Through a process that blends score-based direction and improvisational openness, Cabado and Schiller achieve a rare degree of …
Chordioid
Chordioid documents two distinctive approaches to contemporary chamber music, channeling the shared experience of J.P.A. Falzone and Morgan Evans-Weiler as composer-performers in various experimental contexts. Their collaboration, honed since 2016 in the Ordinary Affects ensemble, finds new voice in these recordings: a pairing of extended works that foreground restraint, attention, and timbral investigation. Falzone’s pieces present a delicate interplay between prepared piano and vibraphone. He …
Ricercar nell’Ombra
Ricercar nell’Ombra grew out of a collaboration between French composer Emmanuel Holterbach and the seven-member Florence-based ensemble Blutwurst, both devoted to the acoustic investigation of slowly transforming sonic patterns. Conceived during residencies at Villa Strozzi and other venues across Florence, the project sets out to pay homage to Italian music history while inventing new forms through a deeply collaborative method. Holterbach’s admiration for Italian music across centuries led hi…
Chamber Works
Luiz Henrique Yudo’s Chamber Works marks an insightful journey into the translation of visual art into sound, presenting music that bridges architecture, painting, and sculpture with contemporary chamber idioms. Brazilian-born and Amsterdam-based, Yudo composes using an original approach that is self-taught, drawing inspiration from structures, patterns, and artworks he admires. The album’s five works are performed by Apartment House, a leading ensemble in contemporary experimental music. Their …
The Fish That Became the Sun
Frank Denyer’s The Fish that became the Sun (Songs of the Dispossessed) stands as one of the most ambitious and singular orchestral creations of recent decades. Conceived over several years and premiered over twenty years after completion, this piece distills Denyer’s fascination with sonic diversity and theatrical intensity. The score assembles a phantasmagoria of acoustic colors: alongside chorus and solo violin, one encounters sitar, crumhorns, cimbalom, children’s songs, and a host of constr…
The Boundaries of Intimacy
British composer Frank Denyer presents seven beautiful chamber works dating from 1974 to 2018, opening a door to his unique soundworld. Released by Another Timbre in November 2019, The Boundaries of Intimacy features sublime, unexpected pieces of delicate intimacy performed by a variety of artists including Luna String Quartet, Juliet Fraser, Elisabeth Smalt, Jos Zwaanenberg and Nobutaka Yoshizawa.
"Most of the music on this CD is soft, some of it very soft indeed. To achieve the optimal listeni…
Puma Court
Puma Court stands as a study of texture and sonority, shaped through the unique pairing of two double basses and two hardanger fiddles. Composed by Jon Heilbron, whose practice bridges modern settings and folk tradition, these works were born from collaborative sessions in Norway and Berlin. The project’s genesis traces back to a duo concert with Norwegian bassist Håkon Thelin, inspiring Heilbron to expand his ideas to a quartet format with the addition of hardanger fiddlers Helga Myhr and Rasmu…
Among the Tarnished Stars / Quatuor pour la fin du temps
UK ensemble Apartment House performs two landmark works for the same instrumentation of violin, cello, clarinet and piano: Olivier Messiaen's Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1941) and Toronto based composer Linda Catlin Smith's Among the Tarnished Stars (1998). Released by Another Timbre in August 2019, this recording takes a fresh modern approach to the Messiaen, drawing out its experimental character, while revealing the sense of drama and intricate gradations of sonority in Smith's rich and mys…
Point/Wave
Point/Wave represents a rare confluence of precision and open inquiry, as Catherine Lamb’s composition for Cristián Alvear translates the enigmatic condition of sound into tactile experience. Commissioned by Alvear and realized on Another Timbre, Lamb’s score meditates on her signature just intonation, deploying the Secondary Rainbow Synthesizer to generate four environmental chords that breathe around the guitar’s modally tuned strings. The electronics hum and fade - reflecting timbral shifts f…
