Listeners who have digested those bold revisions and extensions of the classical language made by the likes of Gyorgi Ligeti, John Cage and Luciano De Cilio will discover more food for thought on Marcus Fjellstrum's effort, Exercises In Estrangement. These nine works set up camp around a scene of modern classical arrangements, populated by flute, trumpet, harp and cello, which periodically venture out to more wide-open, quieter pastures where their edges are blurred and otherwise frayed by digital manipulation.

The opening pair of pieces makes a virtue of shrillness, issuing in continuous piercing, needle-thin strands of harp and flute; they unravel on occasion but hold together by circular breathing techniques. On trumpet, Joel Samuellson contributes to the sense of anxiousness by forcing air through heavy spittle, sounding the instrument as a bubbling pipe. The cyclical repetition of the piece reminds of Steven Reich, yet Fjellstrum is able to create distance by way of sustained, urgent multiphonic drones that agitate the air and the psyche with penetrating, confrontational edginess. After a successive minute of such a pattern, one imagines the pieces will simply peter out, until a stammering fist of static scuttles to the fore and sends the unsuspecting listener to a corner.

There are sporadic instances of such wild baying and prickly squabbling, but overall the unaided orchestral instrumentation draws out Fjellstrum's thoughtful, ear-catching arrangements of ensemble frames and transitions. As compositions proceed, they take lodgings in more dense dwellings; it is there that one more clearly observes loose melodic contours that thrive on bold leaps of register and nuances of tone and timbre. Figures still dissolve into abstract arrangements, so there remains a broad spectrum of sounds in play as they explore ways of coinciding and continuing together across the remaining pieces.

Diversity is found in "Kandinsky Kammer", as rattling percussion swats and pings trot along with marching drums and waltzing clarinet melodies. The whole piece evokes the image of a parade being held by partakers in the theatre of the absurd. Elsewhere, in the ornate string motifs of "Campane Morti e Acqua Crescente" one notices the romantic, almost rosy hues of Ligeti. The only qualm one might poke at this work is that, though the compositions sprawl across a wide-range of sounds, they do so in a manner one would expect from a pupil of Cage and Reich: there are steely textures, moments of squealing dissonance and muffled voices, but these appear, for the most part, layered too far down in the mix to invoke much stimulation. Regardless, unlike most efforts which endeavor to grab your attention and flaunt how wonderful they are inside, Exercises In Estrangement goes about its day with the aura of someone humming to herself while absorbed in blurry thought; I, for one, find that fascinating.