It’s a measure of UK saxophonist John Butcher’s standing in the global improv community that he’s able to command such a large, international electro-acoustic ensemble, absolutely bursting with serious talent. Even more so that each musician is utterly committed to realising his uncompromising and decidedly avant-garde compositions. Butcher comments: “I want to give instructions that run from the very precise to the almost intangible, in a way that allows the musicians to mould their playing into the piece.”

The environments he summons are intensely austere, full of taut gestures and elusive, sometimes indefinable sonic events. There are notable similarities to some of the more experimental outposts of contemporary classical music, too. With its incessantly fidgety undertow of small percussion, populated by lunging arco strings, rasping horns and stabbing piano, ‘Slipstream’ suggests Varèse. ‘Oyashio’, with its droning spectral moan, recalls Penderecki at his most spooked.

With more than a dozen distinct voices involved, it would have been easy for these compositions to seem crowded, yet they retain an impressively spacious sense of restraint throughout.