Paintings by Andrew Chalk and photographs by Timo van Luijk. Their collaborative mix for Blue Mountain School comprises music that spans both their respective musical-output and record labels’ catalogues, Faraway Press and La Scie Dorée, and more.

(AC) My monotypes and adapted paintings that part-comprise, Impression Lointaine, evoke feelings of displacement and estrangement. These textured topographies stubbornly resist specificity yet provide access to an imagined landscape set apart from nature, shrouded in melancholic darkness; a world plundered and abandoned; a monochromatic end of days.

(AC) In these landscapes it is possible for our thoughts, dreams and perhaps even our nightmares to reside, no-doubt affected by suggestion and fleeting-mood. Traditional boundaries appear to fluctuate between dissolution and definition. The ground here is unsteady, our footing unsure because we are not easily accommodated by these depictions of the landscape: there is no horizon on which to focus, no easily identifiable fixed points to guide us.

(AC) However, this kind of uncertainty can encourage a particular kind of internal-freedom (of thought), seemingly brought about by the transient beauty of imaginary places – places we may idealise but never physically visit. These images offer a journey through a strange and unfamiliar environment whose tendency to compel reflection, invite the traveller to revisit memories of lived experiences – the influence of the natural environment upon our imagination.

(TL) My photographs of landscapes evoke the feeling of disoriented harmony, melancholy, power and stillness. The monochromatic colour reduces the environments to shape, line, light and shadow, whilst still manage to channel unity. My work is intuitive and reflects the transience in nature in both micro/macro perspectives.

(TL) The discord between nature’s ever-greater capacity to organise organically and humankind’s proclivity for straight-lines and metric-order fascinates me. All my life, I’ve been some kind of dreamer, observing decay with curiosity; forever collecting stuff – small, meaningless, intriguing. I still wonder about the unconsciously rooted meaning of that. Fact is, it plays a significant role in my work.

My work is without doubt a necessity for my well-being and a very rewarding way to deal with the world as it is. It distances me from the capitalist, technocrat and infodemic controlled society in which we live.

Timo van Luijk is an autodidact sound instrumentalist/improvising composer, photographer and printmaker who has been active since the 90s; in 2000, he founded the private label, La Scie Dorée, for the publishing of both his solo work and related projects. All La Scie Dorée releases are published as wonderful vinyl-only editions, presented in sleeves designed by the respective artists with lay-out assistance from Meeuw.

In 1989, along with video and sound artist Geert Feytons (1967–2006), Luijk founded the multimedia noise collective, Noise-Maker’s Fifes; since 1996, he’s been creating improvised compositions using old acoustic and electric instruments as Af Ursin; as well as a long history of various collaborations with Christoph Heemann (In Camera) and Limpe Fuchs, Kris Vanderstraeten, Raymond Dijkstra (Asra), Frederik Croene and more recently with Bart De Paepe and Louise Landes Levi. He also runs the Metaphon label releasing 20th-century avant-garde music, mainly focusing on releasing archival and previously unreleased works by mainly Belgian electronic music composers and sound artists.

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Andrew Chalk is an artist and musician whose highly acclaimed body of work spans more than three decades. His oeuvre comprises both eponymously named releases and aliases such as his (now ceased) solo noise project, Ferial Confine, and Nine, as well as a string of elusive collaborative projects with associates such as David Jackman (Organum), The New Blockaders, Darren Tate as Birdcage Walk, Accoy, and the collective Ora (occasionally joined by Jonathan Coleclough, Lol Coxhill, Colin Potter and Daisuke Suzuki), Christoph Heemann as Mirror, Jonathan Coleclough, Giancarlo Toniutti, and more recently with Robin Barnes as Isolde and Marsfield (the latter with Vikki Jackman and Brendan Walls) and Naoko and Daisuke Suzuki (founder of Siren Records) as Ghosts on Water.

In 2005, Chalk established his private label, Faraway Press (successor to, Three Poplars, founded in 2000, with Heemann). The imprint mostly publishes Chalk’s sprawling solo and collaborative musical activity, presented in handmade, special portfolio cases (sometimes clothbound with ribbon fastening) and mini slipcase designs with wooden spines, often with obi strips and original artwork printed by hand – simply beautiful artefacts in their own right.

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andrewchalk.bandcamp.com

Since 2011, Chalk and van Luijk have been recording and performing together as, Elodie, creating music that both reflects and transports the listener into the places depicted in their respective visual work. Elodie’s output probably falls under ambient, but given its capacity for tension, the meditative, blissed-out atmospheres often recede into nocturnal, chthonic unrest, or else somewhere between.

With the exception of, Vieux Silence, 2016 (released on Stephen O’Malley’s (Sunn O))), Khanate, etc.), Ideologic Organ, imprint), they have released almost exclusively on both Chalk’s Faraway Press and van Luijk’s, La Scie Dorée.

For more information or inquiries regarding purchasing prints, contact George Hields, gh@bluemountain.school.