Photos: Alarm Will Sound Announce NEW ACOUSTICA Album

Alarm Will Sound, the 20-member chamber ensemble, has announced New Acoustica, a new album out October 23 via Cantaloupe Music.

Photo Credit: Ryan Hartford

A sequel to their 2005 album Acoustica — which translated Aphex Twin's glitch-heavy electronic works into acoustic arrangements — New Acoustica builds upon its predecessor's formal ambitions. In taking on compositions by SOPHIE, Jlin, Lucrecia Dalt, King Britt, and more, Alarm Will Sound push themselves to recreate electronic music's bold sound manipulation by exploring the limits of their instruments, according to the announcement.

Alarm Will Sound has also shared New Acoustica's lead single: a chamber music interpretation of SOPHIE's 'Faceshopping.' Listen to 'Faceshopping' and preorder/presave New Acoustica here.

As Alarm Will Sound's Gavin Chuck writes in the New Acoustica liner notes:

'Over the last 20+ years, we've continued to reimagine how electronic music can inspire deep and rich music made for humans to perform live. As electronic music has developed and changed, so has our work with a new generation of collaborators. This has led to the creation of some of our most artistically stimulating, mind-opening, and limit-pushing music.

And with the enormous amount of change and growth that has happened in electronic music since 2005, now felt like the right moment to harness the work Alarm Will Sound has done with these artists to create this follow-up album, an album not focused on a single artist, but rather one about the breadth and diversity of the field.

In four of its tracks ('Electron Orbitals,' 'The Intention,' 'Back Against the Wall,' and 'Cabeza'), New Acoustica represents something fundamentally different from Acoustica: an even newer model of collaboration in which electronic-music artists create original music expressly for and with Alarm Will Sound. Over years of experimentation, we have developed ways of working that allow artists who typically compose for DAWs and digital workflows to write directly for a live acoustic ensemble—synthesizing two approaches that have historically operated in parallel.

This collaborative process unfolds through an iterative back-and-forth between artists and arrangers, with musicians in the studio shaping the final sound. Together, we have invented unorthodox practices that move beyond conventional classical-music practices that rely primarily on notation. In addition to traditional instruments, helium balloons, styrofoam, bubble wrap, and countless unconventional techniques do not merely imitate electronic sounds, but also realize the artistic visions of collaborators who may have never before written for acoustic forces.

The result is music that could not exist any other way—neither purely electronic nor conventionally acoustic, but something genuinely innovative. New Acoustica is an imaginative, virtuosic, and kaleidoscopic journey through contemporary music-making across digital and acoustic platforms. We hope this album is a testament to what becomes possible when the boundaries between those platforms, and between composer and ensemble, dissolve into a shared creative practice.'

More info at newacoustica.com.

Coming fresh off the group's 2026 GRAMMY Award win for Best Chamber Music / Small Ensemble Performance (for 'Donnacha Dennehy: Land Of Winter'), New Acoustica is the second release (following Lift, released in spring of this year) in AWS 25, a series of album releases and live performances that serve as a yearlong celebration of Alarm Will Sound's 25th year. AWS 25 serves as both a reflection on the group's varied, form-breaking work over its quarter-century existence as well as a glimpse into the expansive possibilities for their future.

Since their 2001 debut performing the music of Steve Reich at New York's Miller Theatre, Alarm Will Sound has treated the concert hall less as a sanctuary and more as a laboratory. Over the past 25 years, they've collaborated with Dirty Projectors on The Getty Address; built multimedia explorations of cultural rupture with projects like 1969, reframing Lennon, McCartney, Stockhausen, Ono, Berio, and Bernstein through the lens of political upheaval; and joined Björk onstage at Carnegie Hall to launch her Vulnicura world tour. Along the way, they've championed a generation of boundary-pushing composers and artists — from John Luther Adams and Meredith Monk to Jlin, Tyondai Braxton, Eartheater, and Tyshawn Sorey — continually expanding what a chamber ensemble can be.

Alarm Will Sound has moved fluidly between iconic concert halls and experimental spaces — from Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center to Brooklyn's Roulette and the Bang on a Can Marathon — appearing everywhere from Disney Hall and the Walker Art Center to underground festival stages across Europe. International tours have taken them to the Barbican, Holland Festival, and Sacrum Profanum. More on Alarm Will Sound's 25-year journey can be found here.

This fall, Alarm Will Sound will join the original Steve Reich Ensemble for Music For 18 Musicians: Staged Variations, a series of performances at Park Avenue Armory celebrating the 50th anniversary of the piece's premiere as well as Steve Reich's 90th birthday. More info on those Park Avenue Armory performances can be found here, and more info on upcoming Alarm Will Sound performances can be found here.

Tracklist

'minipops 67 [120.2][source field mix]' — Aphex Twin — arr. Chris P. Thompson

'Black Origami' — Jlin — arr. Chris P. Thompson & Texu Kim

'Faceshopping' — SOPHIE — arr. Alan Pierson, Tim Leopold & Matt Smallcomb

'Family Galaxy' — Tim Exile — arr. Oscar Bettison

'Electron Orbitals' — King Britt & Marcos Balter

'Hanabi (in-ear extended mix)' — Chris P. Thompson — arr. Miles Brown & Chris P. Thompson

'The Intention' — King Britt & Christopher Stark

'Vole Sweeps Up!' — Matt Rogers — arr. Chris P. Thompson

'Back Against The Wall' — Jlin — arr. Igor Santos

'T69 Collapse' — Aphex Twin — arr. Stefan Freund

Live Dates

Oct 2 - New Acoustica - Rochester, NY @ Eastman School Of Music

Oct 14 - Music For 18 Musicians: Staged Variations - New York, NY @ Park Avenue Armory^

Oct 15 - Music For 18 Musicians: Staged Variations - New York, NY @ Park Avenue Armory^

Oct 16 - Music For 18 Musicians: Staged Variations - New York, NY @ Park Avenue Armory^

Oct 17 - Music For 18 Musicians: Staged Variations - New York, NY @ Park Avenue Armory^

Oct 18 - Music For 18 Musicians: Staged Variations - New York, NY @ Park Avenue Armory^

Oct 29 - In Vain - Boston, MA @ Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum

April 15 - What Belongs To You - New York, NY @ NYU Skirball

April 16 - What Belongs To You - New York, NY @ NYU Skirball

^ = with Steve Reich & Steve Reich Ensemble