You don’t need a degree in electro-acoustic sound engineering to appreciate what’s going on here, but it probably helps.

Goodheart’s piece is subtitled ‘mixed suite for five performers and nine instruments’ and described as a ‘multi-movement collaborative composition by composer, improviser and sound installation artist.’

It hinges on Goodheart’s ‘re-embodied sound’ technique, which uses transducers to enable the musicians to generate electronic sounds as they play so that, in essence, they are performing alongside a ‘ghost’ of themselves. The quintet are also surrounded by metal percussion instruments with transducers attached, enabling them to add further textures. So much for the theory. In practice, a spoken introduction reminiscent of Alvin Lucier’s ‘I Am Sitting In A Room’ gives way to metallic shrieks and scrapes that rise up like a feral, avian cacophony. Prepared piano and clarinet provide safer footing for a moment before being blown away by a rudely bellowing tuba.

After a menagerie of clucks, pops and whistles, the piece resolves into a long, lingering drone of ghostly, metallic abstraction. It may not exactly be easy listening, but Goodheart’s work represents an exacting and fascinating meeting of art, music and science.