Lise Illean was born in Australia but is now based in the UK. Her compositions draw on landscapes that are both aural and visual, imaginary and real, abstract and actual, as heard in this absorbing debut recording.

The visual nature of Illean’s music can be gleaned from the album’s title-track – the four-movement arcing, stilling, bending, gathering for piano, string ensemble and pre-recorded sounds. In the opening movement, searching string glissandos are combined with pointillistic patterns on piano that appear on the music’s surface like droplets of water suspended in mid-air. More animated moments punctuate the second, while the third’s chorale-like opening imparts a more austere expressiveness to the music. The final movement, which served as Illean’s starting point for the composition, offers a fitting conclusion by drawing on elements presented in the previous three.

Caught in a web of suspended animation, Illean’s music draws in the listener. Viewed as if through a microscope, details are enhanced at times to reveal their sonic inner structures. At other times, one is made aware of the music’s slowly shifting gaze and panoramic sweep. Nicholas Moroz, artistic director of London-based Explore Ensemble – who give an impressive account of Illean’s A Through-Grown Earth for soprano, chamber ensemble and pre-recorded sound – likens the composer’s long shots and slow pans to film director Andrei Tarkovsky.

The two substantial works contained on this recording – Tiding II (silentium) for soprano saxophone, percussion, piano and electronics and the earlier Land’s End for chamber orchestra – linger longer in the memory, perhaps because their extended timescale allows Illean to explore and develop a more diverse and distinctive sonic palette. Inspired by Christiane Baumgartner’s woodcut Deep Water, the 18-minute Tiding II (silentium) combines gong-like sounds and metallic timbres with prepared-piano-style interjections, the latter executed with poise and precision by Siwan Rhys, while the dense, low-lying reverberations and string tremolandos in Land’s End (performed here by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under David Robertson) conjure up a desolate barren terrain that owes something to the photographic images of visual artist Vija Celmins.

With its focus on elemental forms and patterns, arcing melodies and tactile textures, the hushed, understated gestures of Illean’s music invite listeners to immerse themselves in a world where near silence and stillness shape the very fabric of its sound. Recommended.