Eluvium - Copia

I should say from the off that Copia effectively sounds like nothing. Its genius is that it is a mirror, reflecting back on to you what is projected on to it. But, in and of itself, it is…well………..nothing. And it is, quite possibly, my favourite album ever.

When I first heard this record, in my dorm room at university in 2007, it took me so far in to my own head that I couldn’t tell if I was creating the next bars to the song or it was a pre-made record. It felt as if I was orchestrating music inside my own mind. That it was organic, human, and inseparable from me. (CUE DiS' REVIEW OF THIS RECORD.)

Matthew Robert Cooper wrote Copia under his moniker- ‘Eluvium’. It is twelve tracks long, around 60 minutes and instrumental. It is a stew of solemn strings, dulled horns and occasionally a gentle piano chord. There’s really very little else. And unlike Explosions in the Sky, there is no dominant emotion. It is faceless. It isn’t tiring and it isn’t sleep-inducing. It's just blank. Listening to this record might therefore induce some kind of mild temporary mental paralysis; a dissociative numbness. It is either a brief escape, a pointless vacuum or a moment of exquisite clarity that charges into your conscious mind when the album does its thing.

As epically reminiscent of purgatory as this record is, I have perhaps listened to it more than any other in the last five years. That such a title should be held by such an inoffensive record is not surprising. I don’t want to listen to something that gets intrusive over and over again, or predictable. But I want something that is the alternative music fan’s version of sorbet. I want something that is multi-faceted, pleasant and light. I have slotted this artist into so many playlists, sandwiched between songs of differing genres (or courses, to continue the meal analogy) that I don't know if it's a compliment or suggestion of epic blandness. Between Vanilla Ice, Bombay Bicycle Club, The Upsetters, Prince, Star Slinger, The Velvet Underground: whatever. I just listen to it loads. And rarely get bored, or feel it has nothing left to give.

Anyway, to me, this is the universal LP. I have listened to it perhaps once or twice a week every week for five years (and am now on a twelve step dependency programme) and it is very close to my heart. If there is one record I could recommend to everybody, it would, in fact, be this. Not Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours; not a biggest selling album of the last 10 years like a Lady Gaga record; not Susan Boyle. I would give you a record that you would pick something up no matter who you are or what your musical persuasion (maybe you don’t even have one) and I would tell you to just listen to it. Something that sounds universal. And, such a thing, that can be all things to all people, is, simultaneously (and confusingly), nothing, to nobody. This is a tantalising and devastating juxtaposition to me. Unity and loneliness are prisms for the very trials of life.

Ambient is easy to do, but it is hard to do this well. Copia is almost unnervingly synchronised with something human. It drifts with effortless calm; a natural, almost earthly serenity. The chords on an organ will change just as your mind takes a pause; the grandiose airiness of ‘Indoor Swimming at a Space Station’ reminds you of a feeling that you are, well……indoor swimming at a space station, and ‘Prelude for Time Feelers’ floats above you, with a blinding, almost religious gaze. Forever patient; forever willing; forever still.

It’s easy to listen through in one listen, and I recommend paying attention to the longer tracks like ‘Repose in Blue’, ‘Indoor Swimming…’ and ‘Ostinato’, that you can really get into. I would also say it’s best listened to with headphones.

This album is not like other contemporary ambient records, and Matthew Robert Cooper is not like other contemporary ambient artists. While others use either melody or atmosphere (or a combination of both) as a weapon to steer you to feel certain things or draw energy at certain points, Eluvium eradicates all self-awareness to achieve lightness and room for relaxation. It is like taking a deep, deep breath. In the hardest of times, in the complexity and chaos of life, Copia brings total stillness. Time almost stops, when I hear this record.

Philco Fiction review - Live @ The Lexington, London, 26 January 2012

I featured Philco Fiction a few months ago on this blog, and last night they played their first gig in London since their debut released in Norway. It was a great experience. I had heard that they were good live and they didn’t disappoint. The trio play a brand of electro pop that is something like The Knife covering every genre under the sun. Folk is on the record (‘Take it Personal’), as is experimental Bjork-type stuff and just some simply brilliant hook-driven tunes. What’s so exciting about them though is that they do their own thing. Lyrically, they they're intelligent and silly, and they have a humour and self-effacingness that doesn't take anything too damn seriously.

On the night they hit it. Taking the stage wearing an eye-catching slanted hat, Turid Alida Solberg did this upper-bodydis.loc.a.ting.shoulderdance.thing. Her singing is confident and outward looking. She is also really quite beautiful...which made me want to go to Norway a bit.

This album is a must buy when it comes out in the UK. The Norwegian release on Brilliance Records is stupidly difficult to find and you basically have to import it from Norway at present (not fun with exchange rate and shipping costs), so kudos to anyone that bought it at the gig (although if you bought vinyl, there’s no mp3 despite the claim on the sleeve, unless I'm completely retarded). In fact, I now think you can’t even stream this album online! It was taken down from Ja Ja Ja.

Radio 1 recently played ‘Portrait of Silence’, and there was a bloke there who said he had introduced Philco to Huw Stephens. So good work! If you saw the show, there’s plenty more tunes where that came from.

Set went something like...

Finally
Help!
The Youth
The City
Too Close
Portrait of Silence

Can't remember it now exactly, so apologies if it's wrong. Also if anyone can get a me digital download for the vinyl I'll be your friend!

Fanzine - Roman Holiday

Fanzine hail from London and make scuzzy, lo-fi rock. We haven’t heard this kind of stuff in a while. 'Roman Holiday' reminds me of Weezer, a stonier Sum 41, and recent fellow London bands to cause a bit of a fuss, Mazes (see here) and The History of Apple Pie. It’s awesome. Out now on Fat Possum.

Vondelpark- nyc stuff and nyc bags

I remember feeling pretty indifferent when first introduced to the XX back in 2009. (I know, is it blogger sacrilege to say that now?) However I realise the debut's enormous impact. That album took simple, sparse, emotionless dance beats, and ordered them in such a way when combined with vocals that they could conjour deep emotion. A neutral beat with gentle infusions of R&B created a feeling that was on the one hand deeply loving, compassionate and sensitive and on the other alone, detached and bleak. Like The Weeknd, with whom comparisons have been quite forthcoming from House of Balloons onwards, the XX’s minimalism had a stony profundity. Black American R&B titans famed for their rich production (Aaliyah, R Kelly, D’Angelo, Destiny’s Child) have since been spotlighted, heralded by certain artists as marvels, and then with the precision and detachment of a surgeon’s knife, had their hearts teased out, distilled and dripped into arid digital concoctions, or ones primarily composed of silence or echoing clacks. The XX’s debut was a key moment. It magicked depth out of bareness. It took R&B’s emotion and made it alone and monochrome.

Vondelpark are one of many artists striking that chord: let’s call it the Higgs-Depression. They are, according to the BBC’s review, “How to Dress Well with a slightly superior budget [insert: that’s still bugger all]; RnB for heartbroken bloggers more likely to send a loved-one files than flowers.” It’s probably true. The Guardian’s New Band of the Day (No 1,039- June 2011) considered that if you had to listen to constant grim music or constant happy music for the rest of your life, they would choose the former if it meant listening to Vondelpark. (I’d choose it anyway. After all isn't Barney & Friends used to torture hostages in Guantanamo Bay?) Yeah, all the elements of that disconnected yet soulful compound reveal themselves: Feedback-layered production, barely discernable vocals and loose hums that drift through each track of their second EP. Called nyc stuff and nyc bags, even the title hints at lethargy.

From three young Surrey boys, nyc stuff and nyc bags is the follow on from debut Sauna (2010), and more radiant. Its songs are alike: they’re all cyclical and quasi-hypnotic, which creates this extreme XX-like melancholia. R&S noticed it- the label behind James Blake- and released it. “TV” loops a ringing guitar lick over echoing voices, and snippets from porn (or at least I think it’s porn). “Hipbone”, a defeated mire, is wonderfully representative of the soul v. disconnection juxtaposition. The push and pull of its feeling is complicated; its merry dance is pure anxiety. Muted, hushed, it is more likely to creep up on you than the no holds barred staring of How to Dress Well. “Camels” gently calms and drags you into a numb universe, with similar results.

All are of equal merit in my view, and are like a controlled explosion taking place in a sound-proofed room. Vondelpark are the muffled alarm that gently triggers suppressed distress. In my view though the most interesting track is "Outro for nyc", which closes the EP. Its emotional dance is as tender as the wind that shakes the barley. Vocal washes mix with glassy guitars and a funky dance beat to hit a cold, lost, isolated chord that makes depression by the hand of freshly laundered pillows.

Ultimately I think Vondelpark could be a critical success, even if, due to their 'sadder' sound, they might be less conventionally appealing to a non-indie audience than even the XX. If you want a track from the first EP, try opener "California Analog Dream", and be sure to look out for them. nyc stuff and nyc bags is out now on R&S (buy it here (UK) or here (US)).