First encounters are usually key encounters. This is mine with the music of Ingram Marshall. So let’s spill out the first impressions. Here is a composer for whom sound and texture rather than melody and hamony are the real emotional sensors. Kingdom ComeÊ–Êa work inspired by the Bosnian war and composed in memory of one of its casualties‚ Marshall’s own brother­in­law Francis TomasicÊ–Êis a sound tapestry‚ a cinematically­styled montage. An audio postcard from the region. It’s almost more of an installation than a composition. A prepared tape becomes the backbone of the orchestra‚ musical ‘actuality’ from Marshall’s Yugoslavian experiences integrated into an unsettling stream of consciousness. The opening is memorable‚ but even as you are trying to put your finger on why‚ the allusion to Sibelius’s Swan of Tuonela becomes apparent. But it’s as if we’re looking and listening from the underside of the lake. The distortions are like memories with unpleasant‚ tragic associationsÊ–Êtoo important to be suppressed but too painful to be recalled with any real clarity. A ‘Croatian’ hymn emerges from the tape in grainy slow motion; later a ‘Serbian’ mix of soprano cantor‚ priest and bells; finally the buzzy sound of the gusle and the hoarse chanting of a ‘Bosnian Muslim’ singer. There is one moment of upheaval in the orchestraÊ–Êa scream almostÊ–Êbut otherwise it appears to act as little more than background‚ a context for the taped material. Texture more than music. In the final analysis‚ I have to sayÊ–Êand I know this sounds harshÊ–Êone wonders who this piece is really for. We know what it means for Marshall‚ but is it not really a case of ‘you had to have been there’ for the rest of us? Hymnodic Delays is also an ‘effect’ piece‚ electronics used this time to elaborate vocal counterpoint artificially. So Paul Hillier’s Theatre of VoicesÊ–Êreal and ‘processed’Ê–Êtransmit a quartet of New England hymns across the centuries‚ so to speak. Echoes‚ re­echoes‚ delays‚ overlaps making for a timeless‚ quite haunting‚ often very beautiful sound experience. But how does it relate to‚ or directly enhance‚ the texts? How is it as word­setting? ‘Swept Away’ takes the process to heart almost literally with voices individually and collectively fading‚ slipping away in pitch‚ but soon replenished: ‘Death like an overflowing stream/Sweeps us away’. So definite gains there. But then you hear a natural single voice introduce ‘Low Dutch’‚ a setting of the 23rd Psalm‚ and your mind goes back to the beginnings of polyphony when it was the composer‚ not the digital processor‚ writing wondrous acoustical effects into the music. A rather different kind of hymnodic delay. But if you are still intrigued‚ Fog Tropes pits the Kronos Quartet against sound effects from San Francisco Bay. Foghorns and sea birds predominate. You’ll wish you were there‚ not here.