Profiling cellist Matthew Barley a few years ago (6/19), Charlotte Gardner aptly called his multi-genre output a ‘fizzing cornucopia’. His latest disc sees Barley showcase eight composers writing music for solo cello and electronics, the plethora of works spanning from 1980s Jonathan Harvey to recent commissions. ‘Electric’ is a timely album when, following the scoring work of the late Jóhann Jóhannsson, electroacoustic cello has become ubiquitous in film and TV, and artists such as Nils Frahm are filling halls with solo instrument-plus-electronics recitals.

It’s the longer works that draw the best from Barley’s warm tone and sensitive playing. Harvey’s Ricercare una melodia creates a compelling drama from superimposed cello lines, some cantabile, some pizzicato. Modal in character, the work has a classicist’s sense of form into which Barley infuses his impassioned playing. Oded Ben-Tal’s Present, Perfect, features contrasting sections of discursive and spare style, thick and thin textures; using real-time AI, the electronics part is subtle but engaging. Some works eschew real-time signal processing for a pre-recorded backing track, such as Jan Bang’s Noticing Things, a triptych spread across the album with improvised cello whose compelling sonorities range from ambient hums and wispy harmonics to percussive col legno resonances.

There are well-established names alongside newer ones. Michael Gordon’s Light is Calling, composed not long after 9/11, closes the album, combining a plangent cello melody with rhythmic 4/4 electronic backing recalling Björk and quasi-ring-modulated cello samples. One of the finest current British composers, Anna Meredith, has three works on the disc. moonmoons brilliantly blends legato Lydian-key phrasing and electronic accompaniment, the cello’s expressive voice surrounded by a halo of pitch-shifted pizzicato. Honeyed Words opens with a throwback to old-school 1950s sine tones, before the instrument enters and starts imitating the sine tones’ glissando movements, sketching out a tonal chord sequence as more and more pitches enter. It’s a simple, playful work and has a winning charm.