This recording from the award-winning viol consort focuses on an important 16th century composer and radical thinker Christopher Tye. The English composer is especially bold in his metrical and harmonic experiments embraced within his mystical but surprisingly approachable instrumental works. There are pieces depicting the biblical Rachel weeping for her children, an In Nomine counted in lengths of five beats (unheard of before the nineteenth century) and obsessional works – such as Sit Fast – which test the rhythmic skills of musicians with passages of dizzyingly modernist metrical complexity. Phantasm take a radically different approach to previous recordings, delivering a performance that brings out the music’s ceaseless energy, rhythmic articulation, and provocative harmonies – in short, one that highlights Tye’s insights as music for today. Phantasm will perform works by Christopher Tye at Austria’s Trigonale Festival and London’s Wigmore Hall in September and October 2017 respectively.