System Restart

The Icebreaker ensemble made its name pioneering the hardedged  Minimalism of Louis Andriessen and creating cult albums like Terminal Velocity and Trance. Since then the players have moved on to amplified instrumental arrangements of music by Kraftwerk, Brian Eno and Steve Martland. This year they give macho minimalism a rest, turning instead to a lively array of new music from experimental female composers in System Restart. The band members have recreated dense instrumental versions of Anna Meredith’s highly successful 2016 studio album Varmints, including the swaggeringly bombastic Nautilus, with its penetrating bass riffs looping upwards under a flickering high-line, or her earlier work, Orlok, in which flashes of instrumental activity are seen as if through the window of a hurtling train.

Entrancing new music by Kerry Andrew, prolific composer and founder singer in the renowned Juice vocal trio, will also feature, alongside Azure by Irish composer Linda Buckley, who writes ambient music for live instruments in an electro-acoustic context. The Andriessen link is maintained in works by his Australian pupil Kate Moore, who has created intriguing soundscapes mixing acoustic instruments and electronics for such distinguished ensembles as ASKO/Schoenberg and Alarm will Sound. There’ll be new work, too, from Dutch composer Jobina Tinnemans, known for her use of unusual sound sources, including two table tennis matches, three hedges being sheared (plus live electronics), and another piece that involves a knitting orchestra.