Following his arresting debut ‘Bartlebooth’ (9/08) and the ‘Drempel’ miscellany as co-director of Noszferatu (1/11), ‘Elsewhereness’ is Joe Cutler’s second NMC release devoted to his music and features a no less distinctive or appealing cross-section of pieces from the past decade.

Written for the opening of the new Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (where he is Head of Composition), the title-track evokes the dismantling of the old then erecting of the new with that mingling of affirmation and ambivalence at which Cutler is so adept. It audibly pervades the content of McNulty, alluding to a character from the TV series The Wire through a workout on Irish traditional music where the constituents of the piano trio become characters in this increasingly ominous mini-drama. Stealthier and more understated, For Frederic Lagnau is a tribute to a departed colleague whose pathos is shot through with acutely delineated irony.

Cutler’s forays into word-setting are significant for all their infrequency. In Akhmatova Fragments, a coursing instrumental processional leads into three pungent miniatures, prior to the relatively extended ‘Summer Garden’ whose rare pathos is the more affecting for its ethereal rapture being so deftly conveyed by Sarah Leonard. Sikorski B offers a further remembrance of the Polish composer, made the more visceral through a disjunctive transition from meditative reverie to anguished threnody which is fatefully halted in medias res. Finally to Karembeu’s Guide, ‘total football’ as translated into a stylistic hybrid that encompasses jazzy humour and hymnic eloquence on its way to the queasiest among Cutlerian resolutions.

This is finely played by Emulsion Sinfonietta – as are all these works – never glossing over textural intricacies and confirming the regard in which Cutler is held. For those yet to hear the earlier discs, ‘Elsewhereness’ proves a no less enticing entry into his inimitable sound world.