When the line ‘Here is a central source of musical emotion’ sounds like poetry, you’ve fallen under the spell of composer/pianist/soprano Kate Soper’s unblinking exploration with Wet Ink’s electronics virtuoso Sam Pluta of the boundaries between words and music, between hearing and silence. ‘I love leaping off the plane of rational thought into free-wheeling improvisation’, Soper writes, and so her three Cage-like lectures and two improvised Dialogues, set to poetic and philosophical texts both spoken and sung by Kafka, Berkeley and Frost, among others, unfold with a romantic sweep of sensory events, both delightful and horrible. And even if you are not familiar with Hylas and Philonous, by the end of the album you will have encountered their thoughts so intimately that you will begin to wonder whether words are the music or vice versa.

The heart of the suite might have been called ‘Brush up your Parmenides’ for its way-off-Broadway inclinations, where philosophy is best when it’s intoxicating. The narrative is brilliantly constructed to set up key moments such as ‘Night-shiner, shining in alien light’, with wonderfully florid harp-like flourishes on the piano stretching the limits of the form, childlike scamperings alternating with Pluta’s deep, sonorous electronic gong strokes, and vocalises floating off into mirrors by Vermeer.

The musical experience takes place amid digital clicks like mutant insects in 1950s sci fi flicks. The professorial spoken parts keep you waiting for punchlines which, like New Yorker short stories, never come. Drew Daniel’s intensely descriptive booklet notes make an excellent guide.