ERIK K SKODVIN

Erik K Skodvin is a Norwegian artist, ambient and experimental musician living in Berlin, who’s been making music in various forms for close to 30 years. Known also under the guise Svarte Greiner (Cello solo) and as one half of the duo Deaf Center (together with Otto A Totland), his works often exists in the peripheries between the light and the dark and thrives on atmospheric moments to create immersive cinematic worlds. Parallel to this, Skodvin has been running his own record label, Miasmah, since 1999.

DRONE SET

Erik K Skodvin has been building deep, involving musical worlds for decades in projects like Deaf Center and Svarte Greiner, both live and on records. His work often focuses on pure immersion, escape and the idea that for a moment time can be paused by sound alone. After performing in various forms for stages and festivals since over 20 years, he has come to find his music works best in the most purest atmospheric essence. This new alteration of his live performance sees him try a more focused setup: Feedback devices, Benjolin (synth) and a series of pitch-shifters, loopers and reverbs are intuitively balanced towards a certain slow (dis)harmonious world building, bringing to mind deep listening composers like Eliane Radigue & Phil Niblock as well as his own project Deaf Center. Quiet resonant timbers patiently build towards a broadexpansive universe of sound, where only the room and our own bodies remain.

BIOGRAPHY

Erik K Skodvin began making music during the early internet “demoscene” subculture in the mid 90s. During this time his music appeared on many small “netlabels” before he started his own Miasmah label in 1999. 

Not long after, the duo project Deaf Center came together with childhood friend Otto A Totland. Together they became celebrated for their debut album “Pale Ravine”, which became hugely influential in its own over the coming years.

Skodvin next created his debut solo album “Knive” under his Svarte Greiner alias in 2006. The album was a hard to define mixture of instrumental improvisations, collages, field recordings, samples and everything in-between. “Knive” got worldwide attention as an obscure yet beautiful trip into the deep forest, mixing influences in everything from David Lynch moods, black metal, goth music, post classical, ambient and more. Pitchfork’s Brandon Stosuy wrote : “it hums with a romantic, bleak, and morose melancholia – something both emotionally and sonically heavy”.

A close collaboration came about with Manchester’s Type records, where Erik also released his follow up album, “Kappe”, as well as several more Deaf Center releases. “Kappe” (2009) became a breakthrough in the way that he got booked to perform all over Europe with his own intuitive way of performing. 

Fever Ray hired Erik as Svarte Greiner to open for her first ever tour of Europe, paving way for new opportunities. This also became the year he moved to Berlin to find new like-minded people and opportunities. There he connected to an emerging scene of contemporary composers like Jóhann Jóhannsson, Nils Frahm, Hildur Guðnadóttir and more and became closely affiliated with the Sonic Pieces label, who soon after released the first album under his own name, “Flare”, in 201 as well as many more future releases and collaborations. Through them he met Nils Frahm, who ended up producing Deaf Center’s second album “Owl Splinters” (2011) at his Durton Studio, over a weekend of improvisations on cello, piano and synths. The album got a great response with New York Times writing: “There are very few notes played in these eight atmospheric tracks, but they’re almost supernatural.”

The focus again came back to Norway, where Erik started collaboration with visual artist Marit Følstad on several installation works over the coming years, which also ended up becoming basis for his next two solo albums as Svarte Greiner, “Black Tie” and “Moss Garden”. Both albums can be seen as creeping contemporary zen based compositions using guitar, cello, turntables and effects. Although Initially meant to accompany surreal slow-moving visuals, the music in itself created an out-of-time mindfulness balancing light and darkness into long-form compositions. The works for Følstad made for a shift in Erik’s perception of music and how his own works could be perceived and created.

FILM SCORES

In 2013, Jóhann Jóhannsson was working on his first big Hollywood film score – “Prisoners” by Denis Villeneuve. After meeting Jóhann in Copenhagen where they shared stage, Jóhann was impressed by his performance and invited Erik in-studio to record material for the film. Not long after, Nils Frahm invited him to the soon-to-become his own Funkhaus studio to lay ground work for the one-take film project “Victoria” by Sebastian Schipper. Left over material from this session would later became the 2023 solo album “Nothing Left but Silence”. Since mid 2010´s, Erik has more and more composed music for film, which somehow seemed like his destiny since working with highly cinematic music for close to 25 years by now. His latest soundtrack works being 2024´s “Afterwar” by Danish director Birgitte Stærmose as well as the Swedish independent horror film “Ur Mörkret” (From Darkness) by Philip W. Da Silva, where he got nominated for best soundtrack at the Swedish “Guldbaggen” award.

Erik Skodvin has always lauded timelessness as a major factor in his music, and eschews trends to focus on a very personal sound, which has slowly developed through the years.

ALBUM WORKS

By 2026 Erik Skodvin has released around 15 solo albums, countless EPs and singles as well as many collaborations. Outside of Deaf Center, he has performed and released music with artists such as Aaron Moore (of Volcano The Bear), Aidan Baker & Andrea Belfi (as B/B/S/), Jasmine Guffond, Islaja, Kreng and more. 

On top of this, he runs the Miasmah record label for over now 25 years, of which 20 of them have been with physical releases of a mixture of like-minded artists whom mostly fall between the typical genres of music – often being highly atmospherical in some way or another. Since 2020 Erik and his partner Monique Recknagel (of Sonic Pieces) co-run the small Berlin based space “mi – so”, which lives and breathes as its own communal entity somewhere between a record shop, gallery and mini event-space.

LIVE

Live, Skodvin has performed in different guises on Festivals around Europe and beyond like Unsound, Rewire, Semibreve, Decibel, Wos, Interferenze, Node, Skanu Mesz, Sound of Stockholm, Roskilde, Flussi, Ekko and many more.