Max Richter Voices 2 180g 2LP

The second album in the pioneering audio-visual Voices project, co-created by Max Richter and Yulia Mahr.

Described by Richter as "a place to think", VOICES was a response to a tempestuous political climate and the enduring need for compassion. VOICES 2 develops this principle, continuing and intensifying the "place to think" concept. While the first part of the project focused on the text of The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights and its uplifting vision - opening with the 1949 recording of Eleanor Roosevelt reading the Declaration, and including excerpts read by a global community of 70 voices - VOICES 2 opens up a meditative musical space to consider those ideas raised by the first record.

"One of the things that was really striking, when we premiered the music, was that even though everyone knows of the Declaration, not many people have actually read it or spent time with it," says Richter. "The overwhelming comment we had from the audience was 'it's amazing to hear that text'. If people can have time to experience that text, and then in the second part of the record really spend time thinking about it, that for me is a perfect outcome."

The message at the core of Max Richter's Voices 2 is one of hope. The music, and the video for the debut single "Mirrors", invites us to take a breather from the rolling news agenda and to reflect instead on the aspirations in the Universal Declaration.

Positivity and a sense of potential in a hopeful new future runs throughout VOICES 2. Yulia Mahr, Max Richter's filmmaker and visual-artist partner, captures the image of rejuvenation in her video for "Mirrors" as flowers bloom.

Yulia Mahr on "Mirrors": "For all its challenges, this moment also offers us an opportunity to build anew; rather than just restarting the old world, we can invent a new one. Therefore, I have made my first film for the second part of Voices a hopeful one. The flowers are all negative versions of themselves - out of the negative, out of the dark and disconcerting - can be born a future that is full of beauty and the positive. It's hard to see it still, but it's potentially there. History is not inevitable. If we come together, we can create a kinder world."

Max Richter: "There are always opportunities for new beginnings. And that's one of the things that's so hopeful about that text. It lays out a very fundamental and simple set of principles, which are completely available to us at all times, but we do have to choose them. That's the challenge, isn't it?"