Elodie - Le Nid d'Ivoire (2020)

The tremulous, electro-acoustic/ambient beauty ’Le Nid d’Ivoire’ marks the return of Andrew Chalk and Timo Van Luijk’s enchanted duo to the latter’s La Scie Dorée label. It's an engrossing smudge from oneiric wind, brass, keys and string tones to much gauzier, gently psychedelic scenes over the LP’s spellbinding narrative arc.

With intravenous stealth and efficacy ‘Le Nid d’Ivoire’ gets right under the skin and soothes the senses with its glacially unfolding pace and sensuous smoke-curl dynamics. It starts out recalling the soundtrack to a film noir, but ends up ripe to soundtrack scenes of druggy, psychedelic experiments or a slow burning, furtive romance, conjuring heavy-lidded osmosis, letting the soundtrack drift over you during the dying light of a winter afternoon.

Where the first side is marbled with wistful melody that wraps us up in its tale, their musical storytelling really comes into its own on the B-side with the title tracks’s tip-of-tongue tremble redolent of everyone from Loren Connors to Akira Rabelais, leading into the elegantly pulsating chamber ambience of ‘Calice et Croix’ before they ultimately transmute into shimmering spiritual resonance with the hyaline strokes of ‘Méridien’ to leave us blissed to bits.