From the opening pentatonic theme of ‘L'avant-midi dune elfe’ through to ‘The 4th Part of the Harbour Trilogy’, Kari Ikonen shows a sparkle and gently questing spirit that engages the listener. In an age when CDs have become expensive business cards, made to impress booking agents, festival promoters and club owners, Beauteous Tales and Offbeat Stories returns to the old fashioned concept that puts the public – listeners like you and me – at the centre of the listening experience. He achieves this by sequencing the music in the way the old vinyl record producers did on 12-inch LPs – by taking you on a musical journey with each tune a vital stepping-stone in creating the overall experience. Sounds radical doesn't it – putting the listener first, rather than the music business professional, but what emerges is an aesthetically satisfying album that does not set out to bombard the senses, but subtly pull the emotions this way and that in what is a very rounded performance. Taking on a wide range of material, including an Armenian love song, a Coltrane classic and a Bollywood piece, Ikonen also emerges as a canny composer – there are three of his originals here – and while he is not going to give the current crop of contemporary piano talent in the USA – the Jason Moran's, the Joey Calderazzo's or the Robert Glasper's and so on — any sleepless nights, what he does do is effectively demonstrate there is more than one way of skinning a cat.