Eluvium

Even in what seems like silence there are often a wealth of sounds surrounding us. Refrigerator hum, fluorescent light cycles and so on. Matthew Cooper, the one and only member of Eluvium, has mastered the art of complicated quiet. Pieces fade up, as with opener "New Animals From The Air,” giving the impression of approaching sounds that have been endlessly repeating. Organ drones swell and fall away while patient bass and guitar lines loop infinitely and all the other moving parts melt together with the vaporous aural equivalence of a fog machine. Only "Taken,” a 16+ minute mini-opus, builds in density and intensity with a quiet but martial guitar evolvement that gradually leads into its louder, fuzz-drenched apex before dropping slowly back to silence. Eluvium’s music is easily compared to the dense and shifting works of Stars of the Lid or Tim Hecker, but there is a relaxed and lighter, more hopeful tone to Cooper’s work. Last year’s detour into neo-classical piano composition, "An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death,” subtly informs these pieces which possess classical canon progressions of melody. As the melody turns each corner the listener may jump onto its roundabout.