OutsideIn is the second portrait disc of English composer Alex Hills to be released on Carrier Records.

The first, The Music of Making Strange, led to Tempo magazine describing him as ‘a composer of interesting and considerable gifts’, and was featured on Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise blog. The music takes inspiration from EA Abbott’s seminal piece of 19th-century science fiction Flatland, which imagines a world with only two dimensions.

Alex’s work explores similarly extreme restrictions of musical dimensions, trapping the harmony in narrow spaces and the instruments in short, sample-like, gestures. Out of this comes music which is directed and focused, but also rich and at times unsettlingly intense. OutsideIn features some of the most exciting performers of new music working today, including virtuoso violinist Aisha Orazbayeva and the vocal ensemble EXAUDI.