Based at the University of Huddersfield, the Australian composer Liza Lim is one of a growing number of contemporary composers who, like Jennifer Walshe and Chaya Czernowin, uses her music to address ecological issues and the Anthropocene. This portrait disc is a primer on Lim’s music.

At 40 minutes, Extinction Events and Dawn Chorus is the centrepiece. Lim draws connections between enormous gyres of plastic rubbish swirling in the ocean and the debris of history around us (as in the classical tradition, quoting here via Janáček). The first movement, ‘Anthropogenic Debris’, opens with a brief descending semitone motif on woozy brass backed by scratching Waldteufels (a type of drum pierced by a string). Droning wind multiphonics give an impression of didjeridoos. The second movement’s strident opening solo trumpet is marked ‘with lyric abandon’. Throughout there is a sense of wonder mixed with despair, of nature grown delirious.

The style of post-new-complexity music, where extended instrumental techniques can mean one hears few distinct notes, lends itself to a focus on nature, a ferment of wild sound. Parts of Extinction Events’ material comes from Lim’s transcription of the mating call of a now extinct bird, the Kauai O’o, a mating call forevermore unheard. The closing movement, ‘Dawn Chorus’, imitates the titular natural phenomenon in the coral reefs with a wonderful jabbering and clacking across the ensemble. It’s quietly devastating. This music’s stakes are higher than normal.

Axis mundi for solo bassoon refers to a tree in Norse mythology linking heaven and earth. The bassoon becomes a tree in animistic animation. Lorelei Dowling gives a wonderfully emphatic performance, switching seamlessly from microtone scales to enharmonic trills to glissandos.

A continuous work in five sections, Songs Found in Dream refers to Aboriginal song lines, wherein geographical landmarks embody myth. Lim unifies her material through the Aboriginal idea of bir’yun, using trill figures alongside percussive rattles. In places you might wish for a more memorable landmark, like a melodic phrase, but Lim’s concern is elsewhere.