Eluvium
Copia

Eluvium, or Matthew Cooper, for 4 years, 4 albums, and 2 EPs, has been the creator of ambient and atmospheric music with a great emotional impact, which in this latest album focuses on the more symphonic aspect of this kind of music.

This Copia, just recently released (just the day before yesterday), seems to reconfirm to long-time fans the expectations expected from the creator of albums like Talk Amongst the Trees and An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death. I say "seems" because I preferred to approach this album without any prejudice or particular expectation, having never listened to any previous work of his, in the purest and simplest way possible.

This is a delicate, subtle album. If reading the adjective 'symphonic' above you imagined trumpet blasts, vertiginous string phrases, or perhaps booming percussion and lofty choirs, you must firmly reconsider, because the sound specific to this album - which shows, it must be said, an extreme cohesion and coherence internally among the individual parts - is exactly the opposite of anything that could be imagined accompanied by adjectives like 'pompous', 'epic', or similar.

The music is mostly centered on the piano, which weaves simple yet impactful melodies, supported by an ensemble - mostly electronic - of strings and various wind instruments, remarkably vast but never overused - after all, as I read in various reviews, Cooper has never been excessive with instrumentation: if anything, he has leaned towards the extreme opposite - and thus always maintains a tonal minimalism, gentle, yet precisely for this reason extraordinarily rich in sensitivity and feeling, albeit rarefied.

Dark and gloomy tensions are channeled into soundscapes of deep melancholy, animated by an underlying tension that feeds on crescendos, especially in the instrumentation - exemplary in this sense is the masterful "Prelude for Time Feelers".

It seemed really difficult to me that with such instrumentation and similar compositional methods (there are those who plunge this album into the post-rock category, which seems to me at least absurd), an artist could lead deep and intimate emotions, delicate and melancholic but not falling into excessive refinements or baroque touches: perfect sublimation of a rational yet passionate orchestration and an emotional and felt minimalism.