Svarte Greiner

Erik Skodvin's "Tunnel of Love" seems to be littered with broken syringes, rusted chains and the rings and necklaces of past travellers bumping against the hull of a small craft. And that is how the second solo album from one-half of Deaf Center opens. His previous effort, Knive, took the unlikely but highly successful route of springing doom from the rattling acoustics of guitar, cello and violin. Kappe is wired but still rough and shuddering. "Mystery Man" is a grey glacier that turns howling guitar loops and what sounds like the bowing of the world's largest cymbal into creeping menace. "Candle Light Dinner Actress," which features distended saxophone from Ultralyd's Kjetil Moster, plays out like a scene in a flooded operating theatre. Low lit glints of surgical steel give way to waves of glittering viscera as each new layer of sound is peeled back. Skodin specializes in violence, not of a sudden attack but of the mounting psychic dread that you may have wandered too far into the gathering darkness.