So what do you need to know about Max Richter? He’s a contemporary composer with indie credibility, putting out his records on FatCat, collaborating with The Future Sound Of London, producing Vashti Bunyan’s first album in 35 years and working on the score for Waltz With Bashir. He’s not from Iceland, but he’s still good, much more accessible than, say, Xenakis, and a fair bit more interesting than Einaudi’s typical emotional oozing. Oh, and FatCat is reissuing his debut album, Memoryhouse, this year.

Whilst Richter’s last album, 24 Postcards In Full Colour contained twenty four short tracks that displayed his abilities in gorgeous bite-sized chunks, Memoryhouse contains much more expansive pieces, more akin to his film score work, and with more contemporary classical ‘convention’ than the almost poppier sound of Postcards...

A lengthy and varied collection, Richter explores many themes and techniques over eighteen pieces, from the operatic leanings of ‘Sarajevo’, to the use of Silver Mt. Zion-esque speech recordings paired with otherwise an minimalist feel, and the dense, almost musique-concrète sounds of shorter compositions like ‘Lines On A Page’. Mostly, though, there are heavy doses of beautiful piano and strings, best shown on longer pieces that have more space to spread their wings and grow. There’s the six minute ‘November’, in which a lone violin solo dances above a bed of rising and falling strings before getting swallowed up by the rest of the orchestra, and the slow, delicate ‘Europe After The Rain’, where a simple piano duets with wavering strings to build a truly desolate atmosphere.

Although this isn’t Richter’s best or most accessible work, it is still a beautiful listen, and an impressive showcase of his skills as a composer, and this is a great chance to hear it if you didn’t the first time round.

Rob Evans