Swerve - Donnacha Dennehy

H - Benjamin Thigpen

Aux lampions - Bertrand Dubedoubt

Private Play - Scott Wyatt

Metropolis mutabilis - Donnacha

Dennehy Voitures - Donnacha Dennehy

High tension and good humour were on offer at the Bank of Ireland "Mostly Modern" concert last Thursday lunchtime at the bank's arts centre. Tension was in the electro-acoustic music; humour was in Donnacha Dennehy's memorably anecdotal introductions, though in some of the music too.

The programme, devised by Dennehy, included three works for pre-recorded tape, by composers from France and the USA. Scott Wyatt's Private Play, a "gestural soundscape" (the composer's words) of precisely timed and defined colours, pitches and glissandos, was the most conservative. More radical was Bertrand Dubedoubt's Aux lampions. Inspired by musique concrete, it seems deliberately to evoke anarchic extra-musical associations, from a distant, demented accordion player to tinkling chandeliers. The most absorbing piece was Benjamin Thigpen's H, a teasing yet rewarding, Xenakis-like play between vivid contrasts.

As an intended new work by Leon Mylo is unfinished, we heard Donnacha Dennehy's Metropolis mutabilis. The unrelenting force of this superbly timed collage of urban sounds is intimidating. So is its companion-piece Voitures, which sets tape and amplified oboe - played with excellent panache by Dominic Kelly - in aggressive dialogue.

Arresting as these pieces are, they are not as satisfying as Dennehy's more recent Swerve for tape and amplified flute.