Why do we listen to music? Is it about stimulation or oblivion, medication, meditation or a conversation? The answer seems key to how you might feel about the latest release from British vocal ensemble Voces8. Since signing with Decca, the group have made conscious moves towards ‘the worlds of film, game, alternative and contemporary classical music’ celebrated on ‘Infinity’.

It’s a good title for an album that flows without obvious articulation between different composers and songs (their word), drifting from arpeggio to arpeggio, pedal point to cluster chord without much by way of peaks and troughs. Tracks are largely wordless and, where there are words, no texts are provided, giving the sense that this is just structural, syllabic scaffolding rather than meaning.

So why do we listen? Well, for starters the group are as technically excellent as ever. This music – which turns human voices into a breathing synth or sound-deck – lives or dies with tuning and balance, which is carefully weighed in every track. Tone is subtly reinvented: now breathily textured in Helium Life Jacket; now laser-focused in Nainita Desai’s My Mind is Still; now with added grit and grounding in reworked 13th-century Icelandic hymn Heyr himna smiur.

Instruments come and go: tuned percussion adding bell-like pulses, harp often supporting choral stasis above. The effect is of a single shifting soundscape – a soundtrack in search of a film. Many tracks have been specially (and cleverly) arranged for the forces, and alongside these reimaginings of music by Hildur Gunadóttir and Jóhann Jóhannsson among others are six premieres. It would be lovely if these took fuller advantage of the group’s skills and explored the range of which they’re capable, but perhaps that wasn’t the brief. If it’s meditation you’re after then ‘Infinity’ is a winner. For stimulation, though, maybe look elsewhere.