About this item

Blackest Ever Black presents a new vinyl edition, and the first CD edition, of Af Ursin’s 2005 masterpiece 'Aura Legato'. Af Ursin is the alter ego of Finnish autodidact composer / improviser Timo van Luijk. His work is rooted in the use of acoustic instruments (wind, percussion, strings), but his special sensitivity to the timbral qualities of each instrument, and his deft blurring of them, results in a sound-world that is mysterious, amorphous and hallucinatory, full of suggestive shadows, creaks and whispers. Informed by years of intensive listening to various types of free music, exploratory drug use and especially the “irregular organic forms” of the Belgian countryside where he resides, van Luijk’s process begins always with pure improvisation: music played in an intuitive, sensual way, without the employment of conscious technique. He performs and overdubs each instrumental component himself, and out of this process micro-structures and loose arrangements emerge: the piece becomes an improvised composition. Over time he has evolved his own richly poetic musical language, full of allusions to drone, acid folk, classical, Musique concrète and jazz, but beholden to none. 'Aura Legato' is one of van Luijk’s darker and more acutely psychedelic offerings: a work of profound interiority, but one that also conjures images of old Europe and fin-de-siècle decadence – dabblings in Thelema, the fog of the opium-den – and has earned comparisons to Third Ear Band, Nurse With Wound, Mirror and HNAS. Fully remastered and housed in die-cut sleeve with gold detailing and individually hand-glued labels.

TRACK LISTING

1. Rêverie En Mineur
2. Capsule Détachée
3. Tableau Fluide
4. Aphanes