No matter how deeply into the wacko abstract your tastes run, Sedimental Records is always there when some head-scratching is overdue. Even for the most jaded of the avant-garde heads, ?Flore de Cataclysmo? will largely succeed or fail based on your opinion of the saxophone in this context. Across the weighty forty-six minutes of the album, three pieces take their sweet damn time making out with the periphery of your mind. ?Floating on the Mass of Blossoms? doesn?t really remind me of floating or flowers except for a vague insectile feel. Instead, Doneda?s soprano and sopranino saxes give you a seventeen-minute kiss with the most tightly puckered lips imaginable, like one of those exaggerated Bugs Bunny smackers if Wonder Showzen referenced it far beyond the realm of patience. Ielasi is like a ghost in the next room, throwing in the occasional softly picked note and some static-laden underpinning, while Zach is rendered a bored free jazz percussionist in the corner. Still, for all this it?s strangely intriguing, even calming. Things pick up on ?One Wing of Matter,? a more subdued and traditional piece of jazzy abandon. Silence is the fourth member here, and Ielasi?s electronic noodling balances Doneda?s lesser role well. The percussion brushes the right way, and finally the trio is a tightly locked unit. Perhaps the final track, ?Run Fingers Over Turquoise,? is most satisfying because by the time it drifts around we?ve fully immersed ourselves in the spirit of the project. Again, less is far more here, but there?s a fluidity that somehow makes it all work. I?m a huge Ielasi fan and think of last year?s ?August? album on 12k to be one of the rare perfect ambient documents, both gorgeous, soothing, and forward-thinking. So I?ll admit that my hopes were to hear him take a much larger part in these proceedings. But ?Flore de Cataclysmo? is what it is, and it ends up being great for what it is. And if you?ve read this far, chances are you know what ?it? is. 7/10 -- Michael Wehunt (26 February, 2008)