ELUVIUM - Similes

An arduous task for any artist: returning to the scene after achieving a perfect balance within one's own modes of expression.

The difficulty of the undertaking must have been felt, more or less consciously, by Matthew Robert Cooper, who, before following up the magnificent "Copia" and its ideal fusion of orchestral suggestions and hazy ambient landscapes, let exactly three years go by, during which he confined his usual prolific output to just "Miniatures" — released for the first time under his given name — and the monumental reworking of "Settler" offered to Balmorhea's "All Is Wild, All Is Silent Remixes".

Cooper thus resumes the path of Eluvium faced with two stylistic options, both equally risky: on one hand, to keep pressing on along ground already excellently tilled, thereby exposing himself to charges of expressive monotony; on the other, to introduce some change to a now-consolidated approach, venturing into territory with which he has never shown particular familiarity. Well, on "Similes" Cooper decisively leans toward the second option, at least on a formal level, since, while grafting unprecedented elements onto his music, he doesn't entirely lose its underlying characteristics.

Looking closely, this is a new and even bolder balancing act, this time poised on a narrow ridge that on one side presents the results achieved on "Copia" and on the other sees the introduction, for the first time in Eluvium's entire output, of rhythmic and vocal elements. These are undoubtedly decisive new factors, but not such as to warrant dismissing "Similes" on their basis alone: Cooper's understated, none-too-confident singing is certainly a striking presence, yet alongside it there continue to flow densely subterranean sonic blankets, now in gradual transition toward brighter reflections and electroacoustic textures more teeming than ever.

In the eight compositions on "Similes" (three instrumental, five sung), there is in fact a recurring intersection of hypnotic loops, impalpable drones and song-cocoons whose unvarying progress often opens up into simple piano melodies and a myriad of liquid, dreamlike reverbs.

In this context, the singing appears merely an accessory element — a finishing touch, on a par with the acoustic sounds and the faint rhythmic ripples — unfolding drowsily in parallel with other, equally independent harmonic streams. This is already clear from the uniformity of the opening "Leaves Eclipse The Light", dissolved only by a few piano notes at the end, and above all from the three recognizable tracks on which the following "The Motion Makes Me Last" is built, in the form of a more assertive vocal delivery, the piano melody, and an underlying expansiveness dotted with countless small pulses and flecks of texture.

There is no shortage, however, of hazy drone currents (particularly in the instrumentals "Nightmare 5" and "Bending Dream") and notable instances of a luminous orchestral ambience, decidedly better suited to blending with Cooper's discreet vocal timbre, gradually gaining in depth. And it's precisely on tracks like "Weird Creatures" and, above all, "Making Up Minds" that Cooper's transition to a sort of ambient singer-songwriter mode (!) proves successful, through the acquisition of further melodic ideas from the masterful modulations that continue to stay true to the recognizable stamp of Eluvium's productions.

Not everything is executed to perfection in the descriptive, fragilely human undertow concentrated in "Similes", as shown by the held-back breath of layers that would instead have every opportunity to soar across the eleven minutes of the closing "Cease To Know". On the contrary, it's precisely the greater concision shown across nearly the whole album (just over forty minutes in total) that stands as one of the achievements Cooper reaches on this work, which, albeit in ways different from the past, confirms his ambitious attempts to scramble styles and modes of expression, along evanescent and, once again, extremely evocative guidelines.

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23/02/2010