Eddie,

Very nice and cool!
Yes, it is pretty Avant Garde.
But the melody is very smooth.
I feel a trick in the chord progression.
The song's tonality you specified is Cm, but if you shift the chords by one measure, the chord progression will be in Bbm as follows.

Bbm7 - Ab6 - Gbmaj7 - Fm7 - Ebm6 - Dbmaj7 - Cm7b5 - F7b9(=Cdim/F)

Transposing them to Cm gives the following.

Cm7 - Bb6 - Abmaj7 - Gm7 - Fm6 - Ebmaj7 - Dm7b5 - G7b9(=Ddim/G)

Above chord progression is also commonly used in pops.
Perhaps I think this trick made the melody very smooth.
Enjoyed my listen a lot.

Best regards.

Shigeki Adachi