Erik K Skodvin: Flame (CD, Sonic Pieces, June 2014)

I have to admit, this isn't what I was expecting. I've heard Erik K Skodvin in contemplative mode as half of Deaf Center, and in doom-drone mode as Svarte Greiner. This is a much looser business, with open, clattering percussion, abstract cello scraping and clarinet tootling, half-prepared-sounding piano, and on the one-minute-long near-title-track Flames a big reverby guitar roar like some kind of psychedelic blues. There's something about the structure and composition of these tracks which make me want to call them jazz, although the sound is often from a richer classical pallette. This takes elements of things that are familiar and appealing to me and does something new and interesting and hard to pin down, and that has to be a good thing.

I bought this from Boomkat. They call it Modern Classical / Ambient.