Murcof created a bit of a problem for himself with his last album: where exactly do you go next after you have covered the Cosmos? His solution is a neat one: explore the fourth dimension. Of course. On The Versailles Sessions he travels back to seventeenth century France, using the classical music and instrumentation of the period (including harpsichord, flute and viola de gamba) as the basis for another remarkable suite.

Despite the difference in scale, The Versailles Sessions is no less ambitious and avant-garde than its predecessor. It moves deftly from the swirling cello-driven drone of opening track “Welcome To Versailles”, to the nightmarishly reconstituted string-scraping of “Louis XIV’s Demons“. On “A Lesson For The Future, Farewell To The Old Ways”, mezzo-sopranos set their other-worldly strains to a backdrop of strings and electronics humming and pulsing like malevolent machinery, before a closing section of harpsichord slowly dissolving in a deep well of reverb. It is quite magnificent. “Death Of A Forest” shrieks and rattles in the wind, atonal strings wailing amidst a monstrous clunking, before it ascends on a finale of spiralling vocals. The instruments on “Spring In The Artificial Gardens” ring out across the centuries, decaying slowly over time, before the album signals a return to the present with the crisp and fizzing electronic rhythms of “Lully’s Turquerie As Interpreteted By An Electronic Script”.

The pieces which make up The Versailles Sessions were composed for Les Grandes Eaux Nocturnes festival in Versailles, and its release is intended as a mere stopgap until Murcof’s next album proper, Oceano. It is too good to be considered as such. With The Versailles Sessions, Murcof has shown once again that he is a huge talent, with huge ambition to match.

Available now from Leaf.