Album Review | 'Prismatic/Plasmonic' 

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Since its inception in 2015, it’s been easy to label the chamber music produced by fivebyfive as contemporary classical. Although it’s an accurate enough label, it’s also a box to which the Rochester quintet and its artistic director, flutist Laura Lentz, have never confined themselves.

Lentz’s third solo collection, “Prismatic/Plasmonic,” out Sept. 6 via Blue on Blue Records, is an electronic album with prominent, genreless flute music — rather than simply a classical album with electronics.

“Prismatic Wind” features Lentz playing contemplative flourishes with a decidedly New Age flair, an unsurprising idiomatic approach to the flute. But composer Chloe Upshaw’s use of electronics acts as an insistent rhythmic counterpoint that also provides low-end textures and a more immersive sound world. From the listener’s vantage point, there is plenty vying for attention, but it never sounds too busy.

Local composer Sean William Calhoun’s “Plasmonic Mirror” comes across as an avant-pop fantasia, complete with trippy dance beats that provide steady, if unpredictable support for Lentz’s equally mercurial flute motives. Undeniably fun, the art-rave adventure rages on for five minutes at break-neck pace before an ominous interlude unfolds, allowing for a breather before launching again into a digital whirlwind.

The EP’s final track finds Calhoun revisiting one of the iconic works in all of classical flute literature — the sly, smooth and evocative “Syrinx” by late-Romantic French composer Claude Debussy. Calhoun’s electronically enhanced take, “Reimagined Syrinx,” ups the ante on the atmospherics while retaining Debussy’s signature hypnotic melody.

The EP listening party for “Prismatic/Plasmonic” takes place at 7 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 6 at Blue on Blue Recording Studio. Free; but RSVP at lauralentzflute.com.

Daniel J. Kushner is an arts writer at CITY. He can be reached at [email protected].