Talk Amongst the Trees
Working with a limited palette of guitars and piano, Eluvium dropped Lambent Material, a masterpiece of aquatic drones and fractured neoclassical compositions, in 2003. He followed it a year later with a brief album of solo piano suites that turned everyone's expectations upside-down. Not quite classical and certainly not ambient in the common sense, An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death garnered the kind of jaw-dropping acclaim that typically overlooks like-minded minimalist artists. This was a breath of fresh air for Cooper, allowing him to dive deeper than ever before. Beneath the cold water glow, Talk Amongst the Trees is a soundtrack for exploring the surface of your own ocean, slow moving like the sand that runs through your fingers, and incandescent like the most unique creatures of the sea. Lacking most recognizable instrumentation (save the guitar mantra, "Taken"), Talk Amongst the Trees is an album that exists in its own fantastic landscape. Making no attempt to compete with the world outside, it drags you inside your own subconscious, allowing sentimental thoughts and memories to pile up on themselves. As the hour-long journey progresses, details fall away until nothing remains but a warm, colorless - but intimately personal - abyss. We're not sure how he does it, but once again Eluvium creates a new and beautiful feeling.
Temporary Residence's resident ambient artist patiently works with narcotic drones and slowly unfolding chord changes.
Eluvium is Matthew Cooper, he hails from the Pacific Northwest (Portland, to be precise), and he is here to save ambient music from the graduate students...