Bryars's The Sinking of the Titanic is one of the oddest and at the same time most mesmerizing works to come out of this end of the century. It began in 1972 as an abstract art piece that kept on building and changing in the composer's mind. It's a ghostly tapestry of eerie echoes, distant sounds almost like whale songs, and interjected rifts representing the band that was playing even as the boat sank. This is a masterpiece that rewards repeated listenings. --Paul Cook