Those familiar with the Deutsche Grammophon recordings of Alice Sara Ott may wonder what she is doing in tandem with Icelandic New Age merchant Olafur Arnalds on The Chopin Project.
A three-minute promotional video, in which she whirs a Rubik's Cube while Arnalds spouts silliness about the Polish composer, may warn the wary from venturing further.
Those who make it to the actual album will need to steel themselves for four pages of the man's booklet essay, obsessed with the idea of classical music escaping from the "unbreakable norm" of an "accurate and true" recording. And what's wrong with that, some will ask.
We learn of his being rescued from a childhood love of punk and heavy metal by a Chopin-loving grandmother, listening to one of the composer's sonatas on the good woman's deathbed - presumably the B flat minor work, of funeral march fame.
All these years later, Arnalds' Chopin Project is irredeemably funereal, complemented by the mushy twilight-grey photography throughout the booklet.