Beatrice Dillon’s ‘Seven Reorganisations’ in live and studio versions for the first release on her new label, HI.
Read MoreARCING, STILLING, BENDING, GATHERING
Lisa Illean portrait album on NMC
Recorded and edited by Nicholas Moroz
‘A through-grown earth’ with soprano Juliet Fraser
Tracks 6-10
Reviews
This disc sounds exquisite, one constant in the four works collected being producer Nicholas Moroz. Recording music this delicate, this refined, takes rare skill ... It’s all compelling, and already on my provisional ‘best of 2024’ list. The Arts Desk
The four works on this portrait album masterfully balance sound as disparate layers that shift depending on the perspective of the listener, and how the various elements collide and combine.Bandcamp
These four interesting, skillfully crafted pieces are definitely worth a listen. Expect meditative weavings of strings, a soprano that nestles naturally into the complex tapestry, a piano and even a pre-recorded zither. ★★★★ de Volkskrant
With its focus on elemental forms and patterns, arcing melodies and tactile textures, the hushed, understated gestures of Illean's music invite listeners to immerse themselves in a world where near silence and stillness shape the very fabric of its sound. Recommended. Gramophone
Parallaxis Forma
Music for voice and ensemble by Catherine Lamb
Another Timbre (at215). Released 22 September 2023
1) color residua (2016/20) premiere recording
2) pulse/shade (2014)
3) parallaxis forma (2016)
Track 1 with Exaudi Vocal Ensemble
Tracks 2 & 3 with Lotte Betts-Dean
Recorded & Produced by Nicholas Moroz
Cover artwork by Nicholas Moroz
With thanks to Zeitvertrieb Berlin/Wien.
This album was made possible through the generous support of the Robert D. Bielecki Foundation and the Hinrichsen Foundation.
Featured on Bandcamp’s Best of Contemporary Classical 2023, by Peter Margasak
Reviews
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
Perfect Offering
1) Perfect Offering - Cassandra Miller
2) Weather a Rare Blue - Lisa Illean
3) Suite - Lawrence Dunn
4) murmurs - Rebecca Saunders
Produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Nicholas Moroz
Cover artwork: detail of ‘Mystical Vandalism’ by Edward Lipski
This album was made possible thanks to the generous support of Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung Ensemble Prize and the Vaughan Williams Foundation.
Perfect Offering invites the listener to journey with the ensemble, inhabiting and exploring four vibrant, imaginary landscapes. Each is underlined by themes of place and space, ecstasy and tranquillity, lightness and darkness, as well as ambience, transience, refraction, and silence. There is a diverse interest in harmony evident in the music collected here – each composer exhibits a distinctive idiolect, ranging from Cassandra Miller’s entirely white note radiance to Rebecca Saunders’ haunting atonal timbralism, Lisa Illean’s spectrally-tinged, weathered sounds, and Lawrence Dunn’s wonky and surrealist tonalities.
This album bears the fruit of an awakening. Explore Ensemble’s pent-up energies – confined and distracted during the pandemic – were at last released over the course of 2022, with a return to concerts and recordings. That busy year was filled with reconnection and growth. This album presents Explore Ensemble’s resulting perspective on chamber music repertoire. It is music that, by invoking either actual or imagined spaces, goes beyond the “chamber” and the genre’s historical allegiance to the slippery notion of musical autonomy.
Huddersfield Contemporary Records is excited to announce that Perfect Offering is the first release from NMC Recordings in a 3D audio format, with both stereo and 3D audio mixes crafted by Explore Ensemble artistic director and album producer Nicholas Moroz. While the CD and digital download versions have been carefully mastered for the perfect stereo listening experience, listeners on Apple Music and TIDAL will be able to use the platforms' integration with Dolby Atmos to realise each track of the release as an immersive, spatial mix. Apple Music users with the correct headphones can take advantage of the head tracking feature to feel as though they are sitting right in the sweet spot of the concert hall, while purchasers of the digital download of Perfect Offering will get a taste of this experience through an exclusive, bonus binaural mix of Rebecca Saunder’s murmurs.
Reviews
New York Times, Seth Colter Wells
Review of ‘Perfect Offering’ allbum
“this immersive mix is a particular gift for listeners at home”
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.
Me Hollywood
Oliver Leith portrait with Another Timbre
Released 12 May 2021
Cover artwork: Susan Te Kahurangi King
Including:
Me Hollywood (2020)
for sextet and tv
Grinding bust turning (2018)
for trio
664 love songs guaranteed to cure heartache (2016)
for bass flute, violin, violoncello, synthesiser and projector
Blurry wake song (2019)
for violin solo
Balloon (2018)
for nine players - conducted by Richard Baker
Reviews
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.”
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 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.'“
Summer
James Weeks portrait with Another Timbre
Released 12 May 2021
Cover artwork: Haris Kittos
Including:
Summer (2018)
for seven players
Violet - Violute (2018)
for violin and clarinet, and viola and bass flute
Düsseldorf (2017)
for seven players
Durham (2018)
for solo piano
Siro’s Garden (2018/2020)
for spoken voice, celtic harps, ensemble, and audio
Reviews
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.
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!”