Two trends have recently emerged among adventurous composers. On the one hand, there are composers presenting aural refuge in nature and quietness from our media-saturated society (Jürg Frey, Chaya Czernowin); on the other, composers leaping deep into post-industrial multimedia to explore whatever it is we are becoming (Jennifer Walshe, Georges Aperghis). The music of Croatian composer Mirela Ivičevic´ (b1980) falls into the latter camp, and as shown by this debut portrait album (commissioned for winning the Siemens Composer’s Prize), her music is an exhilarating ride.

Ivičevic´’s style often reminds me of a techno DJ mixing one record after another, layering heterogeneous sources into a continuous stream (Ivičevic´ studied media composition). The F SonG literally sounds like a vinyl record rotating on a plate: grainy noise comes from a flute, while repeated periodic violin pizzicato eventually spirals wildly alongside effusive flute and piano. At the opening of Baby Magnify/Lilith’s New Toy, again we hear a repeated gesture, this time a periodic heartbeat dyad on flute followed by an up-and-down string glissando and resonating vibraphone note, which is eventually cut off by loud rumbling piano and furious string tremolando. Throughout the work, these gestures repeat and vary and the ensemble sounds melt trippily into one another. Grungy sister works CASE WHITE and CASE BLACK are ensemble pieces teeming with the noise paroxysms, flashing electric guitar, clarinet multiphonics and overblown flute that are de rigueur these days for Mitteleuropean composers. But Ivičevic´ transcends her idiom through an impressive aptitude for textural clarity and dramatic pacing.

Sweet Dreams is a musical exploration of the composer’s pregnancy – as Shilla Strelka points out in her booklet notes, a domain of experience that male-dominated music history has rarely touched on. And there’s no sentimentality: we’re thrown into a delirious cloud of atonal arpeggios on piano and xylophone, followed by descending clarinet scales and umbral piano and bell to cleanse the palette. Romitelli’s ghost stands at her shoulder but Ivičevic´ is bringing multimedia edginess somewhere new.