Biography
Erik K. Skodvin performed under the alias Svarte Greiner while establishing the Miasmah imprint and contributing to the duo Deaf Center. Material from that pair conveyed expansive cinematic textures that echoed Angelo Badalamenti’s scores for David Lynch productions, yet Skodvin’s solitary recordings inhabited far bleaker terrain. Across those releases, indeterminate natural textures fused with sustained low-frequency tones and the rasps and groans of cello and guitar strings, generating an unsettling mood that immersed audiences in a cold, hallucinatory sonic realm.
Born in Langesund, Norway, in 1979, Skodvin displayed early fascination with both music and visual art. He trained in graphic design before relocating at age twenty to Oslo in 1999, where he launched Miasmah simultaneously as a design studio and an open MP3 platform devoted to his own projects under assorted pseudonyms; the next year he extended the operation to include kindred artists. In 2004 he formed Deaf Center alongside longtime collaborator Otto A. Totland, issuing the EP Neon City and the album Pale Ravine on the British Type label.
Once Pale Ravine appeared, Skodvin gradually reduced his focus on electronic textures and, after acquiring an electric guitar, began exploring hands-on instrumental techniques. His debut outing as Svarte Greiner was the piece “Traditional Wood on Trees,” featured on the Silva compilation that inaugurated Miasmah’s CD catalog—an effort supported by Type’s John Twells (Xela) via his role at Manchester distributor Baked Goods. The anthology, populated by several post-classical figures, earned strong acclaim and prompted Type to release Skodvin’s first solo album, Knive, in 2006; the record functioned as a sonic horror film and introduced the self-coined term “acoustic doom,” a style that subsequently found widespread emulation.
Over ensuing years Miasmah matured into a comprehensive operation, issuing multiple dark-ambient titles whose artwork Skodvin handled exclusively, while he also accepted design commissions from external labels and sustained his Svarte Greiner output. He placed a series of limited LPs and cassettes on small imprints and delivered two additional full-length CDs: 2009’s Kappe on Type, which broadened his sonic range into thicker, immersive layers, and 2010’s Penpals Forever (And Ever) on Digitalis, an “imaginary tale of a long-dead Baroque painter and his telekinetic correspondence with a flightless bird” that stood as his starkest and most harrowing work. After settling in Berlin he joined pianist Nils Frahm’s studio, resulting in the 2010 Sonic Pieces release Flare—issued under his own name and markedly more restrained, luminous, and approachable than prior Svarte Greiner material. The second Deaf Center album, Owl Splinters, also tracked at that facility, appeared on Type in 2011; selected vinyl editions appended a forty-five-minute Svarte Greiner piece titled “Twin.”
Svarte Greiner partnered with artist Marit Følstad on the installation Black Tie White Noise and the video work Something in the Way, both exhibited at Oslo and Tromsø museums in 2012, after which the album Black Tie emerged on Miasmah in 2013. Deaf Center’s EP Recount followed on Sonic Pieces in 2014. Svarte Greiner’s Moss Garden, incorporating two further commissions tied to Følstad installations, surfaced on Miasmah in late 2016.
Born in Langesund, Norway, in 1979, Skodvin displayed early fascination with both music and visual art. He trained in graphic design before relocating at age twenty to Oslo in 1999, where he launched Miasmah simultaneously as a design studio and an open MP3 platform devoted to his own projects under assorted pseudonyms; the next year he extended the operation to include kindred artists. In 2004 he formed Deaf Center alongside longtime collaborator Otto A. Totland, issuing the EP Neon City and the album Pale Ravine on the British Type label.
Once Pale Ravine appeared, Skodvin gradually reduced his focus on electronic textures and, after acquiring an electric guitar, began exploring hands-on instrumental techniques. His debut outing as Svarte Greiner was the piece “Traditional Wood on Trees,” featured on the Silva compilation that inaugurated Miasmah’s CD catalog—an effort supported by Type’s John Twells (Xela) via his role at Manchester distributor Baked Goods. The anthology, populated by several post-classical figures, earned strong acclaim and prompted Type to release Skodvin’s first solo album, Knive, in 2006; the record functioned as a sonic horror film and introduced the self-coined term “acoustic doom,” a style that subsequently found widespread emulation.
Over ensuing years Miasmah matured into a comprehensive operation, issuing multiple dark-ambient titles whose artwork Skodvin handled exclusively, while he also accepted design commissions from external labels and sustained his Svarte Greiner output. He placed a series of limited LPs and cassettes on small imprints and delivered two additional full-length CDs: 2009’s Kappe on Type, which broadened his sonic range into thicker, immersive layers, and 2010’s Penpals Forever (And Ever) on Digitalis, an “imaginary tale of a long-dead Baroque painter and his telekinetic correspondence with a flightless bird” that stood as his starkest and most harrowing work. After settling in Berlin he joined pianist Nils Frahm’s studio, resulting in the 2010 Sonic Pieces release Flare—issued under his own name and markedly more restrained, luminous, and approachable than prior Svarte Greiner material. The second Deaf Center album, Owl Splinters, also tracked at that facility, appeared on Type in 2011; selected vinyl editions appended a forty-five-minute Svarte Greiner piece titled “Twin.”
Svarte Greiner partnered with artist Marit Følstad on the installation Black Tie White Noise and the video work Something in the Way, both exhibited at Oslo and Tromsø museums in 2012, after which the album Black Tie emerged on Miasmah in 2013. Deaf Center’s EP Recount followed on Sonic Pieces in 2014. Svarte Greiner’s Moss Garden, incorporating two further commissions tied to Følstad installations, surfaced on Miasmah in late 2016.
Albums
