In the hands of most artists, a project as dark and sinister as The Tyburn Tree would be commercial suicidal.

The notorious public gallows as documented by Samuel Pepys in 1664 inspires an epic song cycle chronicling the underbelly of London’s streets and ginnels. Thanks to an unhealthy fascination with graveyards and slaughterhouses, bordellos and Jack the Ripper and the Ratcliffe highway murders, this is heavy-going, unwieldy material. Yet somehow The Tyburn Tree is rather fantastic. It is fitting that Almond should collaborate with Ivor Novello winning composer John Harle on such a dark enterprise, as he has never strayed far from the dark side.

Harle is best known for his movie scores and the haunting theme to BBC1’s Silent Witness. Yet even by such standards The Tyburn Tree is an extreme and disturbing piece. It is hard to know where or when one would play such dark material, but on the underground through headphones may prove too mentally destructive. Few will have the stomach for this very dark piece, even though it really is a true work of art.