Press + Reviews
TEMPO, Ian Power
Review of ‘Perfect Offering’ album, April 2024
A must-listen for a monumental snapshot of British new music of the past years.
This collection focuses on some of her pieces for voice, tackled by some of England’s most adventurous and committed musicians… It’s an extraordinary collection, and it gives me hope that more folks will encounter Lamb’s music
New York Times, Seth Colter Wells
Review of ‘Perfect Offering’ allbum
“this immersive mix is a particular gift for listeners at home”
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN, Caroline Potter
Review of Wigmore Hall, 21 June 2023
Combining premieres of music by U.K. composers and a welcome opportunity to hear work by significant European figures, the Explore Ensemble’s programme reinforced their reputation as one of the preeminent new music groups working with live and electronic sound. Pascale Criton was revealed as a distinctive voice in late-20th-century French music, and frankly if they can play Paxton’s piece, the Explore musicians can play anything.
The Observer, Fiona Maddocks, April 2023, ★★★★
Review of Kings Place, 14 April 2023
From Miller’s For Mira, prompted by a computer-generated transcription of Kurt Cobain singing “Where did you sleep last night?”, to Lamb’s Parallaxis Forma, enhanced by Lotte Betts-Dean singing in pure, wordless spirals, each demanded close attention. This was an ear-bending, mind-expanding workout, in a week not short of aural exertion and all the better for it.
Bachtrack, Christopher Woodley, April 2023, ★★★★
Review of Kings Place, 14 April 2023
…the sheer beauty of the sound produced by the players was captivating. The focal point was the person of Lotte Betts-Dean, draped in a costume designed for extra-terrestrial ritual, and lit by a single spot – a tractor-beam drawing up the purple haze of her wordless melismas. Caressing her voice was the buzz of microtonal intervals, and the shimmer of overtones and harmonics lightly blown and nimbly fingered; the celebrant and the communicants in rapture!
streams of expression, David Grundy, September 2022 (Expanded review from The Wire October edition).
Within British classical musical culture of late, there seems to be a growing musical conservatism: not so much on the part of performers, composers, or artists, but on that numinous network of programming, funding, and institutional survival within a period of crisis sparked, not only by the covid situation, but by the current government’s increasing hostility towards culture (perhaps the “culture wars” might be renamed by their true term, “class war”, despite the pseudo-populism indicated by appointing Nadine Dorries as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport of the United Kingdom). Spoken or unpsoken apologias disavow all but the briefest of traces of the avant-garde within the world of the classical concert hall—a glance at this year’s Proms line-up, in comparison to the programmes of even, say, five years ago, serves as a good example. And so a concert like that of the Explore Ensemble is all the more welcome for bucking the trend.
The Wire, David Grundy, October 2022
Review of Wigmore Hall debut concert on 8 July 2022
“Perfect Offering is about the passing of time, about imperfection and suffering and other age-old themes, but it's never grandiose. Instead, it offers space for each listener to bring themselves to the piece. I found it deeply moving.”
[…]
“Applause for all the pieces is suitably rapturous. Let's hope we see more such programmes soon.”
TEMPO, Daryl Jamieson - April 2022
Review of James Weeks’ ‘Summer’ album with Another Timbre
Weeks, the Explore Ensemble and producer Simon Reynell of label Another Timbre have made with this disc an oasis, its beguiling simplicity concealing conceptual riches.
[…]
If the album as a whole can be heard as a virtual garden in which sensual beauty and serious conceptual music-making are finely balanced, it is because Weeks is invested in the evocation of sonic virtual spaces and places rather than musical narrative or drama.
TEMPO, Caroline Potter - November 2021
Review of Oliver Leith’s ‘Me Hollywood’ album with Another Timbre
‘Perhaps the best way to describe Leith’s album would be musical surrealism, and perhaps, on reflection, that’s why it appeals to me so strongly: his music makes the everyday strange and the strange everyday.”
The Times, Rebecca Franks - November 2021 - ★★★★
Review of Systema Naturæ at hcmf// 2021
“A thicket of blue wires sprouted, from numerous everyday(ish) objects in the Bates Mill Blending Shed — these were modified, mechanised and connected to computers to form a household orchestra, duetting with the ensemble’s acoustic line-up… there was something fascinating about its detailed snapshots of beeping, tapping, clicking, whirring and whooshing.”
Bandcamp: Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical June 2021 — Peter Magarsak
Review of Oliver Leith’s ‘Me Hollywood’ album with Another Timbre
“…the tender vulnerability of his writing proves gripping and, as with most of these five works, unlike anything else I’ve heard this year.”
All That Jazz — John Eyles
Review of Another Timbre CDs: Oliver Leith ‘Me Hollywood’ and James Weeks ‘Summer’
“…beautifully played, with the musicians sounding as if they got under the skins of the pieces.”
The Squid’s Ear — Thomas Mellish
Review of Oliver Leith’s ‘Me Hollywood’ album with Another Timbre
“Explore Ensemble plays with a consummate ease, providing an appropriate stage for Leith's pieces to be realized. Me Hollywood represents a fantastic intersection between vision and technique, ideas and deeds. I certainly felt 'something.'“
Musique Machine, Roger Batty - June 2021
Review of James Weeks’ ‘Summer’ album with Another Timbre – ★★★★★
“Summer is a most compelling and rewarding example of the modern classic form, with Weeks skilful and engrossing composition played with great depth, atmospheric grace, and felt nuance by the Explore Ensemble. Really if you have even a passing interest in modern classical music, and its connected related genres you’ll be needing to pick this album up….simply put, spellbind stuff!”
Kate Molleson, BBC Radio 3, New Music Show - November 2020
“One of the UK’s top new music bands”
TEMPO, Review, Neil Thomas Smith
HCMF 2020
“Explore Ensemble produced another festival highlight for me, presenting works by Lawrence Dunn and Oliver Leith, the latter having something of a break-out year with his unique brand of gentle, tonal subversion. The sun-kissed aura of Dunn’s Sentimental Drifting Music was also hugely effective but the stand-out from this concert was Joanna Bailie’s Dissolve, even without its planned video component. The integration of field recordings and instrumental textures is hardly new, but Bailie did it here in revelatory fashion.”
The Guardian, Review, Andrew Clements
hcmf// 2020
“Explore introduced Oliver Leith’s charmingly discursive Me Hollywood, with its wonderful stylistic promiscuity, and also included Lawrence Dunn’s delicate, microtonal processional Sentimental, Drifting Music.”
5:4, Review, Simon Cummings
HCMF 2018, Sciarrino’s Carnaval (UK Premiere)
“One of the UK’s most impressive new music groups … At this rate goodness only knows what they’ll end up doing next year.”
5:4, Review, Simon Cummings
HCMF 2017, Tracing the Moon
"One of the most beautiful things I’ve heard at HCMF this year, and further proof positive that Explore Ensemble are just as indefatigably outstanding as we all suspected last year."
Arts Desk, Review – ★★★★
Principal Sound 2018, Explore Ensemble & EXAUDI:
"Riveting 'Principal Sound' event delivers the luminous rewards of austerity modernism"
The Guardian, Review – ★★★★
Principal Sound 2018, Nono's Dell'azzuro silenzio. Inquietum