This Is A Big One. ** Edition of 100. Beautifully designed sleeve by Bruno Stucchi/Dinamomilano. ** Die Schachtel's latest follows naturally from the sonic territory explored within the label's Decay Music series, while pushing well beyond. La Donna del Lago is the debut release from the geography-spanning trio of the Italian bassist and composer, Massimo Pupillo; the Canadian soprano singer and conductor, Barbara Hannigan; and the French composer, sound engineer and musician David Chalmin. An immersive tapestry of electroacoustic sonority in six parts, fed by a constrained palette of electric bass, voice, electronics, and synthetic textures - sprawling in its sense of space, while pointillistic in detail - it pushes the very conception of what vocal music can achieve.

The LP is a product of friendship and chance. Active since the 1990s, most well known as the bassist within the Italian mathrock / post-hardcore outfit, Zu, Pupillo has traversed a startling range of creative efforts, including noteworthy collaborations with Alvin Curran, Mike Patton, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Peter Brötzmann, Mats Gustafsson, Oren Ambarchi, Stephen O'Malley, and numerous others. Hannigan is a highly regarded soprano and orchestra conductor, specifically focused on avant-garde and experimental efforts, who has worked with the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Mahler Chamber Orchestra, and Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, staging celebrated performances of works by György Ligeti, Louis Andriessen, and John Zorn. Chalmin, co-member with Pupillo of minimalist ensemble Triple Sun, has collaborated with Katia and Marielle Labèque, Thom Yorke, and The National, as well as operating as a contemporary classical composer whose works have been performed at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Philharmonie de Paris, and WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln.

The origins of the collaboration stem from Pupillo's longstanding admiration for Hannigan's iconic interpretation of Ligeti's Mysteries of the Macabre. Through pianist Katia Labèque - with whom Chalmin has worked - a meeting was arranged in Paris, which eventually flowered into the creative dialogue before us now.

Flowing together seamlessly, the six fully improvised tracks represent a radical and intimate rethinking of what a song might be, without being that thing. Delicate textures and tightly woven movements of shifting resonance provide the foundation for Hannigan's virtuosic vocal utterances - a deeply human root within otherworldly landscapes of bristling sound. The album heralds what could be regarded as a logical extension from the ground previously traversed by Pupillo and Chalmin's collaborations within Triple Sun - conjoining experimental rock and contemporary music - but Hannigan's presence, and a decade of percolation and ever increasing creative ambition, clearly pushed the trio toward uncharted heights. Much like those greats of 20th Century experimental "opera" - Luigi Nono and György Ligeti - the trio pushes the very conception of what vocal music can achieve.

Deeply moving, engrossing, and endlessly surprising, La Donna del Lago is ambient electroacoustic music like it's rarely been known. A towering debut.