Carlos Roque Alsina is an Argentinean-born composer who tends to mix acoustic and taped sounds together in a manner that evokes natural sounds to some degree, something of a more programmatically inclined Iannis Xenakis. The title piece combines piano and percussion with taped sounds that often possess an organ-like quality. While the acoustic instruments dance around each other in intricate patterns, the tape heaves and respires ominously, depicting the sort of backcountry that's unsettling in its eeriness. While the pure sounds of the piece are always attractive, over the course of its 30-minute run, one gets the effect more of a grab bag of sonic delights than of a cohesive composition; it rarely exceeds the sum of its parts. "Entre Vents et Marees" begins as an evocation of wind, but soon incorporates piano and orchestral sounds that threaten to create a "normal"-sounding kind of nature idyll. But a sudden influx of pure electronics transports the piece into abstract realms, where it happily stays for the remainder of the work. The final item is subtitled "Hommage a Bach" and, surely enough, it's composed largely of rampaging piano chords and insane pipe organ trills and bellows. As before, the music migrates into severe electronic areas for a while, but eventually settles down into a bed of shimmering pianistics.

As in much of the music presented here, the chief values (and they are substantial) are found in the simple richness and even luxuriousness of the sounds and their play against and with each other. If it had a more convincing raison d'être on a conceptual level, it would have far greater staying power.