Vieux Silence

Stephen O'Malley on Elodie, the project of Andrew Chalk and Timo van Luijk, and their album Vieux Silence: "Having been entranced by both Andrew Chalk's work with Mirror (and back to his solo works as Ferial Confine, plus multiple collaborations with David Jackman, The New Blockaders, Daisuke Suzuki, etc.), and Timo van Luijk (as Af Ursin, In Camera, La Poupée Vivante, and collaborations with Kris Vanderstraeten and others) for many years, I was naturally intrigued to hear about and hear their duo project Elodie. The project formed in 2010, and has spanned eleven beautiful albums already, to date. Vieux Silence for Ideologic Organ is their first release presented outside of their own record publishing nook, Faraway Press and La Scie Dorée. However this is not the first encounter between Ideologic Organ and Elodie, they performed at a night in London I curated in February 2012, alongside Jessika Kenney and Eyvind Kang. Elodie's performance was among the most delicately engaging and savant I have witnessed... so very quiet, with snow falling in London outside Cafe Oto's windows, the audience palpably entered a high intensity listening focus. The impression of this vivid memory is striking, considering how spare each of the individual elements present that night were. Vieux Silence, and Elodie in general, provoke a visual imagination in an instant, perhaps filtered through aged watercolor, tape grain, antique lenses, forgotten levels of listening, and observational patience. On this gorgeous album, Chalk and van Luijk also collaborate with piano, pedal steel, and clarinet (played by: Tom James Scott, Daniel Morris, and Jean-Noel Rebilly, respectively). Each detail carefully considered and coloring step-by-step, like an impressionist watercolor." Personnel: Tom James Scott - piano; Jean-Noël Rebilly - clarinet; Daniel Morris - guitar pedal steel. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at Dubplates & Mastering.