It took Dana Lyn eight years to create what might be described as a musical diorama accompanying the process by which Jay DeFeo created her massive mixed-media, genuinely iconic painting The Rose, now at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. DeFeo called the experience ‘a point on a slow curve’ and Lyn has created a similarly incremental accretion of mixed musical materials. Its narrative flow, spread over nine movements, is told by a wounded female choir and a virtuoso, streetwise band of violin, clarinet, cello, bassoon, vibraphone, bass and drums. The intention is not to key to specifics but to immerse over time.

‘Mountain Climbing’ opens with glowing sounds before a bassoon does impossible things both lyrical and rude; there’s a wonderful patch of being out of sync before ending with a cool clarinet lament. In ‘Dingbats’ the choir is tracked by the double bass and waves of pulsing sound; in ‘If Womankind Had Built This Transportation’ they’re Britten-ish little boys. ‘Welcome to Painterland’ starts with a drum solo, features Parisian crooning like La création du monde and ends with a delirious little march.

‘Daytime Atheist’ introduces the centre of the piece, ‘Death Rose’, the first version of the painting, ‘White Rose’, and finally ‘The Rose’ itself; the longest track at nine minutes, it celebrates with a rollicking tune for all the instruments before a chorale tune accompanied by vibraphone leads into ‘Coda – The Removal’, at which point the xylophone leads the instruments into a slow dance with the choir. It’s damned ingenious and it’s got soul.