This thrilling album showcases some of Lang’s most urgent, rhythmically complex music performed by an incredible ensemble lineup: the London Sinfonietta, Crash Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, and more. The title track, “Writing on Water,” sets a scintillating patchwork libretto that pieces together literary descriptions of shipwrecks and drowning in its commemoration of the Battle of Trafalgar. Lang’s Nyman-like vocal music lurches and pitches amid a bustling instrumental accompaniment that combines electric guitar and orchestra. The incessantly exciting “Forced March” is a series of relentless collisions between melody and rhythm, while “Increase” combines complex musical patterns and contrasting moods to hypnotic effect.

Mari Kimura (木村 まり Kimura Mari) is a Japanese violinist and composer best known for her use of subharmonics, which, achieved through special bowing techniques, allow pitches below the instrument's normal range. She is credited with "introducing" the use of violin subharmonics, which allow a violinist to play a full octave below the low G on the violin without adjusting the tuning of the instrument. Polytopia is her first CD for the Bridge label, and her first created without collaborators.

Rihm wrote four movements entitled Verwandlung in the first decade of the new millennium. Each one begins differently; No. 1 out of a single tone, No. 2 from pastoral thirds in the violin, No. 3 from a “coup d’archet”, an orchestral trap effect, No. 4 out of brusque orchestral buffets. All carry along an abundance of musical reminiscences and the voice of Mahler is the one heard most distinctly.

BIS present a disc of works by the Japanese composer Mari Takano, composed between 2003 and 2009. The four duos and trios that share the title LigAlien are all results of the idea of what would it be like to implant ‘alien’ music into one of Ligeti’s works. Interspersing the four 'LigAliens' are two solo pieces, Jungibility for piano and Full Moon for violin and electronics, which also embrace a wealth of ideas both musical and otherwise from Duke Ellington, Omar Sosa and Stockhausen (Jungibility) and Björk, Pina Bausch and Miles Davis (Full Moon).

Colombia’s thriving cultural heritage derives from Spanish, African and Amerindian elements. The rich blend of colour and rhythmic vitality found in the synthesis of dance forms and styles, notably the sharply accented Andean bambuco (‘pursuit dance’), the flowing, graceful pasillo and the traditional, rhythmic guabina, recurs throughout this programme. Poignant expressiveness and intricate virtuosity are features of Montaña’s two Suites. Saboya’s Suite Ernestina includes characteristically South American melodies and rhythms, while Caribbean rhythmic patterns are recreated in González’s Preludio.

Hymn Binding has a musty scent that rises up from its ink-stained pages (or inky bars of music) once opened, but it has an inner strength, and an inner resolve, in spite of its age-old music. Solemn strings openly roam through its shadowy tracks, searching for something lost – they have known heartache and the desperate tug of despair – but the ill-light only deepens their disappointment as the unfulfilled strings return home with empty hands. Aged piano melodies perform a melodic ballet beside the strings, and occasionally a clearer electric guitar will cut through the low, overcast clouds. From The Mouth of the Sun’s third album – and their first for the excellent American label, Lost Tribe Sound – has a gloomy, mournful air to it, but its music weakly stands up to the slow freefall of gradual decline. Systems are failing. Everything looks to be crumbling, fencing the music in, but its rust still darkly gleams. The piano is dusty and creaking, but wise, and the strings seek them out.

Mute and Spoon are pleased to announce the release of VILLA WUNDERBAR, on 4 November 2013, a 2CD set, compiling the work of Can founder Irmin Schmidt’s solo and soundtrack work, including two unreleased Can remixes and a collection of soundtrack pieces personally compiled by long-term collaborator Wim Wenders. CD1 is a compilation of Irmin Schmidt’s extensive work as a solo artist over the past 30 years, whilst CD2 – selected and presented by the filmmaker Wim Wenders – is an insight into Schmidt’s vast work as a composer for film and television for which Wenders has written extensive sleeve notes. The two CD compilation includes tracks such as Villa Wunderbar, Kick On The Floods and Bohemian Step, alongside unreleased remixes by Schmidt of two Can tracks, Alice and Last Night Sleep.

Inland Sea is Stephan Micus’ 22nd solo album for ECM, each one taking his audience on musical journeys to far-flung places and unique sound worlds. For decades, he has been travelling, collecting and studying musical instruments from all over the world and creating new music for them. Micus often combines instruments from different cultures and continents that would never normally be played together, adapting and extending them, and rarely playing them in a traditional manner. The instruments then become a cast of characters that help tell the particular story of that album. While he plays nine different instruments on Inland Sea, the lead role belongs to the nyckelharpa – a keyed fiddle from Sweden, with an array of other instruments and vocals providing layers and textures throughout.

Lewis Wright is an award-winning British vibraphonist, composer and drummer based in London. As a vibraphonist, he was nominated for Rising Star in the 2016 Downbeat International Critics Poll, was awarded Ensemble of the Year in the 2016 Parliamentary Jazz Awards with Empirical, and was awarded the Worshipful Company of Musicians prize in 2011.

“To Quince, "Motherland" means our natal home, worthy of love, critique, and support. It represents the terrain of those who identify as women, as mothers of varying types - creators and producers and life-givers and life-sacrificers. Mother-land is both embodiment and inversion of Emily Dickinson’s “Nature, the gentlest mother” - capable of supporting all life, and of obliterating it with forces as simple as a breath of air. This album features never-before-heard recordings of pieces by Laura Steenberge, Gilda Lyons, Cara Haxo, and Jennifer Jolley. As long as we have breath left in us, we will sing our gratitude, our love, our frustration, and our hopes. There is no greater privilege.” – from the liner notes by Quince Ensemble.

Allar Kaasik has enjoyed a long and fruitful career, in his native Estonia as well as abroad. Reflecting on it in the liner notes to this very personal disc, he singles out one particular aspect: the ambition to embrace the very latest compositions by Estonian composers. Performing in churches as he often does, Kaasik finds music resounding in a church a part of the Holy Service. This is reflected in many of the works which have been written for him, with composers such as Galina Grigorjeva and Kuldar Sink enriching the tradition of Estonian church music. Among Allar Kaasik’s many partners in performing these works, several appear on the present disc, including two eminent choirs – the State Choir Latvija and Estonian National Male Choir – as well as the Latvian organist Kristīne Adamaite. A focal point of the programme is the cello concerto Pro et contra by the most celebrated of all Estonian composers, Arvo Pärt. Kaasik is supported by the Estonian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Peeter Lilje and the recording has a particular significance – originally released by Melodiya in 1989, it was the first recording of Pärt’s music published on disc in the Soviet Union following the lifting of the unofficial ban on his music. The remaining works on Timeless Light were all recorded between 2014 and 2016.

For this from that will be filled is the debut album by Clarice Jensen, artistic director of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME). The album explores the variable differences between acoustic and electronic sound as well as depiction of the simulated and the unconscious. It was originally conceived as a collaboration between Jensen and the artist Jonathan Turner as an audio-visual work, but is here presented in it's pure audible form. Building on a long and romantic tradition of solo cello repertoire, Jensen expands and confuses the familiar sound of the cello through the use of effects pedals, multi-tracking, and tape loops recorded at variable speeds, presented in works she has written for herself as well as a piece she conceived together with Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson. Also featured is Michael Harrison's "Cello Constellations" for multi-tracked cello and sine tones, written for Jensen, which meditates on long, sustaining tones. With For This From That Will Be Filled, Jensen has made an incredibly strong first album that feels like a surreal and futuristic journey through an alternate timeline.

The Belgium-based ambient neo-classical composer-director went into her studio sessions with a whole bunch of ideas for her small army of enchanted well-wishers, which included the likes of Steve Hauschildt, John Also Bennett, Angel Deradoorian, Clarice Jensen, Beatrijs De Klerck, and members of Belgium's Echo Collective. She planned on making an album balanced between heavily composed pieces and her kind of post-improv collaborations, where session musicians were free to add to or subtract from their collective efforts. When it came time to mix the results, the album ended up being entirely spontaneous, and it's all the better for it.

Balancing active organized sound worlds from Graham Lambkin with Wandelweiser discretion from Michael Pisaro in five tracks that punctuate concrete sound compositions with Feldman-esque piano progressions, bound together by a short poem; captivating and elusive.

Remembering, written in memory of Evan Scofield, is Mark-Anthony Turnage’s response to the young man’s premature death from cancer in 2013, at the age of 26. Turnage knew Evan as the son of family friends, the jazz guitarist John Scofield and his wife Susan, and the sister of Jeannie, the partner of Ursula. A boy whose quirky but deep rooted enthusiasms – for cinema, axes, hyacinths, friends – reflected a readiness to take on life in all its fullness, a young man whose ways of seeing seemed so good, so full of promise and possibility. Such early deaths strike us less like personal tragedies and more like cosmic catastrophes. What kind of a world is it that allows such things to happen?