Stunning ghostly new work from Timo Van Luijk, a collaborator with Andrew Chalk and member of In Camera with Christoph Heemann. Aika was originally issued in 2008 with different cover art and this upgraded edition should hopefully bring attention to one of the major European devotional drone recordings of the decade. Indeed, Aika explodes simple notions of ‘drone' with a more musical and instrument-based palette that crosses high Gothic form with a beautifully blurred sense of spatial dynamics - all smears of sound and great halos of reverb - touching on the music of Arvo Part and Grouper as much as Chalk and Heemann. The set opens with a lonely baroque piano performance, echoing around an empty room, before the album opens into a grand amphitheatre of disembodied valkyrie choirs and epic drone ascensions that combine the awe-inspiring vistas of early Tangerine Dream with cultic percussion and a dissolved European classical appeal. The second side feels even more ‘classical' in its construction, with a marriage of reeds and electronics that feels like a synthesized Mahler or Ingram Marshall's fog horn compositions re-visioned by Moondog and Cadentia Nova Danica. Aika is a singular work of New European Drone that pretty much explodes the genre and it's a treat to have this available once more, so don't miss out. Edition of 400 copies. Highly recommended! (David Keenan/Volcanic Tongue)