Af Ursin

Trois Mémoires Discrètes

Genre: MODERN CLASSICAL / AMBIENT

LP (Black Vinyl)

Boomkat Product Review:

Playing like a dream within a dream, Quiet music master Timo van Luijk provides a 10th anniversary reissue of his introspective, chamber-like masterpiece ‘Trois Mémoires Discrètes' (three discrete memories), deploying half-lit nocturnes played on flute, brass, organ and barely perceptible concrète treatments that make for some of the most effortlessly beautiful pieces in his esteemed catalogue. A real special one this.

Shrouded in atmospheric mist, over the course of 40 minutes Van Luijk manages to evoke an oneiric, forlorn sense of lost majesty that draws eyelids to half mast. Listening to it again for the first time in years feels like returning to a part-remembered dream, with a nuanced blend of instrumental haptics (English horn, flute, percussion, double bass, Hammond organ) and electro-acoustic sorcery practically altering your listening space’s lumens like a kind of barometric alchemy.

Performed, mixed and recorded between 2010-2012, the album's exquisite poise places it at the point where classical and contemporary circles bleed into their own form, and as with so many of van Luijk’s releases, it’s hard to quantify just what it is that makes it stand so far removed from material that ostensibly exists in similar dimensions. Perhaps it's the stark simplicity of the recording - that stunning, naturally reverberating English horn on the 18 minute opener ‘Sylphide’ - for example, or the bare flute that shapes ‘Taciturne’ - treated with just enough environmental pressure to imbue proceedings with a deep sense of uncertainty.

The three works are immersive scenes unto themselves, deftly fraught with a kind of shiver of materiality that has made all Van Luijk’s work - from solo Af Ursin to his duo with Andrew Chalk as Elodie - so damn special. Its smoke-curl horns and lyrical organ has transported us to a space of absolute mental stillness - even if just for a moment - in a way we haven’t experienced for a long time.

Stunning.

LP (Black Vinyl) (3)