Album: Heiner Goebbels, Stifters Dinge )ECM New Series)

This soundtrack to Heiner Goebbels' installation piece Stifters Dinge is one of the most gripping musical experiences I've had in ages.

Featuring five automated pianos rigged to produce a huge range of sounds, along with montages of noises derived from elemental sources – wind, water, ice, stones etc – and verbal excerpts from William Burroughs, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Papuan natives, it's a sonic drama that pivots on the cusp of the industrial and the organic, capturing the Romantic enchantment of the central text by Adalbert Stifter. Particularly effective are "The Rain", an evocative blend of Bach piano concerto, Lévi-Strauss interview and rainfall, and "The Coast", which finds a haunting Greek lament adrift amid itchy ticks and looming drones.

Download: The Rain; The Trees; The Coast