ELODIE – La Lumiere Parfumee

Faraway Press

Timo Van Luijk represents the trait d’union between the disjointed constituents of what once was the Mirror karyon, having ongoing duos both with Christoph Heemann (In Camera) and Andrew Chalk (Elodie). Don’t envisage a Mirror reunion in a three-soul incarnation, for this is asking too much. However, the goods coming from the newer tandems are not bad as a consolation, and La Lumiere Profumee – the second transcribed phase in Elodie’s chronicles – is yet another pastel-shaded intermixture of moods that incorporate Arcadian echoes, psychotropic frequencies and undersized exhibits of the most regular – and, alas, gradually disregarded – kind of human impression. The sheer nonverbal motility of playing, whatever comes out of an instrument – or a generic tool, for that matter – lies at the basis of nine delicate trips through various stages of slightly perturbed ataraxis. Leaving us to speculate about the acoustic origins – though the dust-smelling piano characterizing several episodes cannot be missed – Chalk and Van Luijk seem interested in depicting an affirmation of the continuance of life with elements of such a subtlety that one is afraid of watching them vanish in the air while the music goes. Ingenuous melodies and atonal lines depicted by a number of reed instruments mesh and lull us softly, different perspectives and planes superimposed in lethargic earnestness. The music highlights the pair’s commonsensical sensibility, picking the elusive nuances of our misconceptions to defeat the hoity-toityness disseminated by innumerable lecturers of the vacuum.

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