Timo van Luijk – Frederik Croene: Ipnopedion – LP
La Scie Dorée, Scie 2519, Belgium 2020
Edition of 300 copies on transparent vinyl
With printed insert
November 2023: second, numbered edition of 45 copies on ‘smoke vinyl’ with silkscreened sleeve, insert and download code. Available through the webshop
Side 1 : Ipnopedion
Premiere live performance of commissioned composition for the ‘In Dreams’ Event, at Kunstencentrum nona in Mechelen, June 1, 2018.
Curated by Philippe Cortens.
Frederik Croene: piano
Timo van Luijk: synthesizer, sound projection
Side 2 : Taetonia
Recorded and mixed at Kulta Saha 2019
Frederik Croene: piano, organ
Timo van Luijk: synthesizer, organ, atmospherics
On the frigid moonless night of December 6th, 1978, a 26 year-old night watchman named Pier Zanfretta was on a routine patrol in the village of Torriglia, where he stumbled into a horrifying encounter with aliens from Taetonia. In order to get more clarity about what happened that night Pier Zanfretta agreed to undergo hypnosis, to let his subconscious speak about his abduction by these aliens.
As his discours under hypnosis sounded uncannily musical and mesmerizing, even without understanding the words, it became the basis of this Ipnopedion album.
For the recording of the title track ‘Ipnopedion’ (side 1) Zanfretta’s speech was played back on headphones, then phonetically reproduced by FC and TVL, lying down in darkness as being hypnotised. Apart from this transposed text only piano and a few hypnosis inducing atmospherics and spatialisations were added.
The ‘Taetonia’ track (side 2) opens with a naieve and enticing piano play slowly being beamed into a vacuum void towards Taetonia. As Zanfretta’s words were vague it remained unclear what happened in Taetonia but things certainly had changed…
Ipnopedion became a ritual invitation to withdraw from the concrete world, returning to it as uncanonical aliens from Taetonia.