Alex Menzies, more commonly known as Alex Smoke, has a techno career spanning 15 years, DJing & playing live the world over numerous times and culminating with a recent string of heady twelves for the inimitable R&S label. Alex’s techno prowess has always carried with it a keen sense of compositional rigor, harmonic outlining pads & the use of strings for emotional depth & weight. A classically trained cellist, the last few years has seen Menzies shift his attention back to composition, cello and the piano culminating with more abstract installation work with visual master Florence To and music for picture commissions.

The first in a two part series of BBC documentary soundtrack work for Kathexis , “Order & Disorder” sees Menzies using a sound palette of mostly orchestral instrumentation, including, voice, cello, prepared piano as well as electronic sources like the ondes martenot. These electronic & acoustic hybrid miniatures are hard not to get lost in as each of the different cues develop throughout the album, each piece carrying with it a profound depth & gravity that is unique and unrivaled in its beauty.

For a high level physics documentary focusing on entropy & information, presented in a strikingly engaging manner, Menzies score provides a serene take on the slippery concept of energy. Angelic harmony runs in parallel with more unpredictable elements like prepared piano, tape hiss, percussive clicks & smothered field recordings, truly encapsulating the documentaries’ themes and our relationship to the world around us, at the same time chaotic, beautiful but most of all full of wonder and awe.