Eluvium - Lambent Material

  by Jon Rogers

published: 24 / 5 / 2003

---

Review

Portland-based Eluvium (aka Matthew Cooper) certainly are soporific. To be precise, 'Lambent Material' inhabits that strange world that exists between sleeping and consciousness where the id and the ego battle it out for dominance. Images flicker and shadows are cast across the mind's eye before quickly dying. As the title suggests, this is music glowing with soft radiance. Like an array of out-of-focus photos, what exactly is really going on can never precisely be determined. Reality or fiction? Who knows as the edges are blurred. In this post-modernist world, the power of the semiotic Myth is ever-present - and what greater place to do that than in the imprecise textures that Eluvium luxuriate in? The signs are there, but not only do they point in the direction headed, but they also obscure clarity, evade definition and are highly ethereal. Eerie, simplistic piano is mixed in with static noise, chilling solitary tones swell slowly up before either gently fading away again into obscurity, or breaking-up like waves against rocks. It's as if Codeine has been asked along to a jam session with ambient-era Brian Eno - and the audience is half-way down the road. Despite the rather silly titles ('I Am So Much More Me That You Are Perfectly You' (sic) or 'Zerthis Was a Shivering Human Image') this is glorious, enveloping and almost epic solitary music for quiet introspective contemplation late at night after the party has long since finished. It's best heard in its entirety. The spirit is captured in its broad, sweeping brush strokes rather than the specific. Echoes resonate whilst the disintegration continues.

Track Listing:-

1 The Unfinished
2 Under the Water It Glowed
3 There Wasn't Anything
4 Zerthis Was a Shivering Human Image
5 I Am So Much More Me That You Are Perfectly You

Band Links:-

https://www.facebook.com/Eluvium-40059
http://www.eluvium.net/
https://twitter.com/eluvium

Label Links:-

http://temporaryresidence.com/
https://www.facebook.com/temporaryresi
https://twitter.com/tempresltd
https://www.youtube.com/user/temporary
https://plus.google.com/+temporaryresi