An absolutely stunning batch of 5 new CDs from Another Timbre - Jim O'Rourke’s Best that You Do This for Me, Adrián Demoč's Hlaholika, Michael Winter's Single Track, Josten Myburgh's Sculthorpe Studies, and Catherine Lamb's Muto Infinitas - ride high within the outer reaches of contemporary experimental and new music, and deliver some of the most exciting sounds we've heard all year.

With a catalog of more than 170 astounding releases under its belt, Another Timbre is an unmissable force in the current landscape of experimental music. Launched in 2007 by Simon Reynell, the British imprint offers a particularly deep dedication to emerging contemporary works by composers from multiple generations, with a scope, ambition, and level of quality that has almost no parallel. Their latest batch of 5 incredible CDs might just be our favorite drop from the label to date. Bridging multiple disciplines and practices, and spanning the work of artists working in various corners of the globe, whether addressed as a total package or as discrete works, these are some seriously stunning organizations of sound.

Easily among the most prolific and exciting artists working in music today, since his emergence in the Chicago underground during the late '80s, Jim O’Rourke has continuously traversed an astoundingly diverse range of musical materiality - pop, free improvisation, electronic and electro acoustic music, and beyond - folding each territory of exploration into a startlingly singular practice. The last year has been particularly productive for O’Rourke. In addition to a steady stream of releases on his own digital Steamroom imprint, he’s dropped In All Due Deference as part of Matière Mémoire’s MMXX series, Shutting Down Here, his duo with Kassel Jaeger, In Cobalt Aura Sleeps, and Le Piano Englouti, a collaboration with Brunhild Ferrari. Now Another Timbre brings us “Best that You Do This for Me”, one of the most fascinating and unique records we’ve heard in a good long time.

A composition for vocalizing string trio, commissioned and recorded by Apartment House - the famed new music ensemble founded by the British-Lithuanian cellist and composer, Anton Lukoszevieze - “Best that You Do This for Me” belongs to an incredible body of chamber music that lies within the larger canon of Jim O’Rourke’s output, once again positioning him as an artist of astounding scope and diversity. The work’s score, played by Mira Benjamin on violin, Bridget Carey on viola, and Anton Lukoszevieze on cello, sprawls to 48 pages, each marked with 4 circles that designate sound events aligned with the strings of each instrument - muted violin, viola and cello - to be held for any duration. Within these circles are indications such as whistling, humming and singing, to be combined with the bowed harmonics of the instruments of each event.

Initially performed on BBC radio as a 15-minute version, for this recording Apartment House decided to push the work toward new depths, rendering the composition across a stunning 50 minutes of mobile sonic events and unpredictable sustained harmonies, all imbued with an astounding sense of humanity of the presence of each instrumentalist’s vocal interventions. Profoundly delicate, almost microscopic details and shifting interplay entwine in the rise and fall within a work that, once again, radically expands our perception of O’Rourke’s incredible practice.

Building on the stunning creative ground captured within his 2019 Another Timbre debut, Ziadba, the Slovak composer, Adrián Demoč, returns with Hlaholika, gathering four stunning chamber works, three of which were recorded and performed by Apartment House, while the fourth captures the sounds of a Czech ensemble at work.

An emerging voice on the European new music scene, Adrián Demoč is a composer, performer and improviser on the fujara and piano. His work rests at a fascinating juncture between the melodically emotive, and more aggressive forms of experimental utterances of texture and dissonance, the territory traversed across the length of Hlaholika. Drawing its inspiration and references from across the creative spectrum, from the works of other composers and musical traditions, to the patterns and meanings of speech and geometry, stunning structures and tonal interplay give way to a shimmering body of composition, threaded with conceptual rigor, with a deep, restrained sensitivity to relational sound.

Incredibly immersive, different configurations for viola, violin, piano, clarinet, and double bass rise and fall, rendering a fascinating rethinking of minimal music as a quiet, but more tonally complex form. An unquestionable high-water mark in Demoč’s increasingly noteworthy career - created in the depths of the global pandemic - Hlaholika leaves you breathless at the edge of your seat from the sounding of the first note to the last.

Since his departure from Los Angeles a number of years ago, following a productive period as a performer, composer, and co-running the wulf, Michael Winter has been something of a geographic nomad, popping up in various corners of Latin America, the United States, and Europe. Currently based in Berlin, his work explores dynamic systems, situations, and settings, often emerging via minimal graphic and text-based scores. Following on from three relatively recent releases - Approximating Omega on Edition Wandelweiser, Lower Limit on New World Records, and Preliminary Thoughts on Bánh Mì Verlag - Single Track is his first outing with Another Timbre, and easily among his most sensitive and engrossing works to date.

Composed for Ensemble Liminar, Mexico's leading ensemble for contemporary music, founded by the violist Alexander Bruck (son of the German avant-garde guitarist and longtime Mauricio Kagel collaborator Wilhelm Bruck) Single Track is a thrilling work for strings that defies intuitive prediction through its progression and timing, moving from rapid sequences of interplay between the musicians, toward slower and slower movements of increasingly durational tones.

Rendered with astounding grace and sensitivity, leaving the rare artistry of the ensemble as present in your mind as it does the composer, Single Track is a truly stunning piece of work of fluctuating rhythms and long tones, giving way to harmonic and structural interplay. Truly striking on every count and throbbing with humanity and life.

The Berlin based, US born composer and violist, Catherine Lamb, is in the midst of an astounding run that has increasingly placed her at the forefront of contemporary experimental composition. Since 2018, she’s delivered 7 absolutely stunning records, each drawing us further into her singular world of thought and sound, presenting discrete, intimate explorations of interactions of tonality, the phenomenological, and liminal states.

Furthering her exploration of harmonic space through alternate systems of tuning, Muto Infinitas, her latest release with Another Timbre and fourth with the label to date, is an hour-long duo for quarter-tone bass flute and double bass, performed and recorded by Rebecca Lane and Jon Heilbron in Berlin during 2019. Sculpting a thrillingly unique minimal space, the interplay of the two instruments shifts between long-tones and delicate punctuations and pulses, winding with careful and exacting placement across the entirety of the work’s length.

Emerging as an entire, free-standing sonorous world to be fully occupied by the listener, Lamb’s Muto Infinitas is yet another striking gesture from a composer with few equals in today’s musical landscape.

Sculthorpe Studies is the first full length to emerge from the Australian composer, Josten Myburgh, following on from his striking body of collaborations during recent years with Antoine Beuger, Jameson Feakes, Emilio Gordoa, Adam Pultz Melbye, Matthias Müller, and numerous others. Operating within a fascinating practice that spans location-based sound recording, collage, and forward-thinking approaches to saxophone and electro-acoustic instruments, the work delves into the realm of ensemble-based conceptualism, played by Jet Kye Chong on percussion, Jameson Feakes on electric guitar, Djuna Lee on double bass, Stuart James on piano & electronics, Kirsten Smith on flutes, and Myburgh on alto saxophone & electronics.

Guided by a deft hand, across its 40 minutes in length, Sculthorpe Studies addresses the complex legacy of the Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe, taking on the subjects of colonialism, cultural appropriation, authorship, belonging, and musical meaning by deploying harmonies taken from Sculthorpe’s music and blending them with field recordings made on Wiilman Noongar, Mandjoogoordap Binjareb Noongar, Palawa and Bidawal country in Australia. Bristling textures and tones twist within the calls of the natural world, reaching out from the isolation of Perth with an astounding sense of inclusiveness and scope that bubbles with the deeply important topical concerns of our times.

A truly striking full length debut from Myburgh, Sculthorpe Studies stands as a crucial truth that great art can display a deep sense of social and political potential, balanced within a body marked by creative grace and brilliance. It’s left us dying for more.