Album: Michael Nyman, Michael Nyman (MN)

This reissue of Michael Nyman's second album from 1981 – effectively his first with a Michael Nyman Band that included Alexander Balanescu and Roderick Skeaping – has aged well.

Its industriously cycling Anglo-minimalism, couched in strings and reeds, is redolent of early Peter Greenaway films: "Bird List Song" is lovely, silly and serious the same time, like the film for which it was written, The Falls. The serio-comic tone helps sustain the music's appeal, compared to the joylessness of much American minimalism: this is music full of affirmative bustle, aware of its lurking pomposity, and not afraid to embrace the free-jazz squawks of Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann on "Waltz".

DOWNLOAD THIS Bird Anthem; In Re Don Giovanni; Waltz; Bird List Song