Tansy Davies has been a notable presence in British contemporary music for over a decade and this first disc dedicated to her music focuses on works written during 2003‑07. Of the four ensemble pieces, Neon and Inside Out 2 are compact studies in pungent counterpoint and incisive rhythms – with the former as evocative in its trade-off between human and mechanistic motion as the latter seems unremittingly abstract. Salt Box invests its restive atmosphere with a covert though ominous aggression relevant to the “ammunition in dry storage” connotation of the title, while Grind Show (electric) draws on a painting by Goya in music whose often unnerving immediacy receives additional emphasis by the subtle range of sounds conjured from a sampler.

The two vocal works pursue more inward but not necessarily less intense expression. Greenhouses uses e‑mails by an ill-fated peace activist, her eloquence of conviction reinforced by the emotional restraint of the musical context. Troubairitz is a song-cycle deploying poems by 12th-century women troubadours, with the often startling explicitness of their sentiments made more so by the austerity of the settings – the voice accompanied only by a discreet drum rhythm in four of the seven songs. Anna Snow contributes a mesmeric vocal while, elsewhere, the Azalea Ensemble – under the expert guidance of Christopher Austin – underline why they have become a leading force on the new music scene. No matter the five remixes seem a superfluous add-on: this disc, vividly recorded and succinctly annotated, can only win new admirers for Davies’s music.