Keaton Henson - Romantic Works (2014)

Here's a surprise for you. Keaton Henson's got a new album out – and he's pulled a Beyoncé and kept it secret. Well, not completely secret, because we and we alone have an exclusive stream of Romantic Works, which is being released at the same time as this stream.

Romantic Works, Henson's third album, sprang from a series of quiet instrumental pieces he wrote. As their numbers mounted, he decided to learn the arts of orchestration and arrangement, even though he couldn't read or write music, taking inspiration from Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass, Henryk Gorecki, Edward Elgar, Ralph Vauhan Williams and Saint-Saëns. The result is a collection of songs from cello, woodwind and piano, which he describes as "bedroom classical" – since he recorded the whole thing in his bedroom – with layers built using found objects and charity shop instruments.