“Early CDs concentrated primarily on improvisation,” declares Another Timbre founder Simon Reynell, “but over the years the label's focus has shifted more towards compositions, in a journey from timbre to pitch.” The Sheffield based imprint adds five more releases to its vast back catalogue this month. Reynell talks us through the label's most recent output below:

Dial 45-21-95 is a series of nine pieces composed by Ryoko Akama based on objects and fragments she discovered while conducting research at the Krzysztof Kieslowski Archive in Poland. The series was commissioned by Another Timbre with the only stipulation being that they should be pitch-based pieces. They were realised for the first time and recorded by Apartment House in June 2019.

Puma Court is a project initiated by Australian born instrumentalist and composer Jon Heilbron, who now lives in Berlin. The CD consists of two pieces both scored for two double basses and two hardanger fiddles – violins with extra sympahetic strings, which are most frequently used in Norwegian folk music. The performers are Jon Heilbron and Hakon Thelin (double basses), and Helga Myhr and Rasmus Kjorstad (hardanger fiddles).

Ziadba consists of five chamber compositions by the young Slovak composer Adrian Democ, who is currently teaching music at a school in Spain, as he says it is practically impossible to survive as an experimental composer in Eastern Europe. Democ's music is very varied: some of his pieces are quiet and restrained, while others are bursting with life and vigour. His “Kvarteto” begins with an intricate and fast-moving canon movement, brilliantly played by Apartment House.

The Fish That Became The Sun (Songs Of The Dispossessed) is a uniquely strange work for a large ensemble of 40 musicians, playing a wide variety of unusual instruments, including many that are specially made for the piece from discarded materials. Originally composed by Frank Denyer in the 1990s, but very difficult to present because of its eccentric instrumentation, the piece will finally receive its world premiere at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival on 23 November. The Fish... is much busier and louder than Denyer”s recent music, and is expertly performed by Octandre Ensemble alongside several smaller specialist groups and soloists.

Beyond The Boundaries Of Intimacy is one of seven chamber pieces dating from 1974–2018, written by Frank Denyer and contained on the CD The Boundaries Of Intimacy. It is written for flute (Jos Zwaanenberg) and electronics, and is the only piece in which Denyer has ever used electronics – even here in a very minimal and background way. In contrast to The Fish That Became The Sun, this CD foregrounds works that are very restrained and quiet, but as always with Denyer, there is a sense of tension or danger in the air that occasionally explodes and cuts across the music.

All the above releases are available via Another Timbre's Bandcamp. Frank Denyer’s The Fish That Became The Sun will have its world premiere at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival on 23 November.