Eluvium is Matthew Cooper's vehicle for submerging controlled dronesfrom his guitar and piano in water and letting them out in a ceruleansubmarine world. The entire timbre of the album is an exploration ofwhat music sounds like underwater. Yet few waves or currents jostle themusic's placidity; each song is eerily consistent, not changing verymuch over the course of its minutes (trickier than imaginable,considering one particular song exceeds 15 minutes). Eluvium songs onlyseem to change over the course of epochs, not eighth notes, but theresistance to change is disciplined, rather than lazy or shortsighted.Each song has the potential to explode or diverge, but instead remainson the easy river and explores a steady tack of controlled dissonancemixed with elegance. The album begins with "The Unfinished," whosesynthetic warbles are punctuated by a errant guitar line every now andthen. The warble returns in "Under the Water It Glowed," but now theguitar line is more prominent melodically. By this time, it seems thatEluvium's songs are slowed down by some sort of physical effect, likediffraction through water particles. Through the aquatic slowness, theguts of the song—or perhaps even its soul—are almost seen. "ThereWasn't Anything" is a straightforward piano dirge with some overlaidfield recordings of voices and conversations, followed by "Zerthis wasa Shivering Human Image," a sonorous epic which oscillates between twochords while the surrounding distortion ebbs and flows. Seemingly threethousand scratchy crescendos occur, filtered through a sediment ofstatic. It's one of those songs which causes you to exhale powerfullywhen it eventually ends, when the tension is finally laid slack. Thecandor of such Eluvium songs, ones which force a confrontation with thesong's guts, is startling. Comparisons to Brian Eno are hard to shrugoff for Eluvium, but they are not indictments. This music is of the EnoSchool (think Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks) and Matthew Cooper would seem to be an Eno acolyte, but the songs are studied without being facsimiles. Lambent Materialis a fascinating listen, and when the last song, "I Am So Much More MeThat You Are Perfectly You," finally delivers the actual sounds ofwater and rain beneath the piano's melody, you are reminded that youcould have been drowning this whole time and not even noticed it. Read More
