Tip! Just when you think you’ve heard everything you want to hear from a solo piano record, something comes along that challenges your preconceptions all over again. Efstathiou has been developing a unique language with the instrument for some time, building up a reputation for idiosyncratic preparations and extended technique. All that’s illuminated in flickering candlelight on ‘Edge of Chaos’; moody and deliciously ambiguous, it’s based on mathematical systems, specifically the transition state between order and disorder. Efstathiou engineers resonant hums that warble alongside one another, disrupting the senses and vibrating from harmony into eerie dissonance. There are moments when her preparations are laid bare, like on the buzzing ‘Amvracia’, but ‘Edge of Chaos’ is most engaging when it’s hardest to decipher. On ‘Dione’, Efstathiou extracts tones from the piano that sound like broken metal pipes whistling into the awkward silence, while ‘Omphee’ sounds as unearthly as Akira Rabelais’ mesmerizing software-enhanced ‘Spellewauerynsherde’. The textures she harnesses here take on the character of a glass harmonica, choral and ghostly but strangely familiar - we’re not sure how she does it, but we’re completely sold.