Thursday, November 8, 2012

Evanescent atmospheres in motion...the new Martin Eden

Athena turned out to be a big nothing up here, not even a trace of snow, not that I'm complaining. Anyway, we've got a couple of easy non-5:30 a.m. days coming up because Sean's school has parent teacher conferences, so yay for that. We had a really nice dinner last night for my birthday, hanger steak, potatoes, asparagus and carrot cake. I don't think I really care about presents (though I got some good ones, the new Martin Amis novel, a pair of badly needed running shoes, socks, tee-shirts, etc.) as long as I get carrot cake.

So that was that, another year, and I put up a new photo last night just for truth in advertising. (More or less...it's the most flattering one of about three.)

Meanwhile, I have a review of the new Martin Eden up at Dusted, which you can read right here.

Martin Eden
Dedicate Function
Lefse

Eluvium’s ambient landscapes have always shimmered from one horizon to another, their gorgeous, shifting textures of piano, synthesizer, treated guitar and other unclassifiable sounds seeming to exist outside time and space. Tracks like “Zerthis Was a Shivering Human Image” (from 2003’s Lambent Material) had a beginning and an end, but no sense of progress between these poles. Cooper’s compositions floated, hovered, flickered and decayed, but they did not stride purposefully into the next moment. Even his last, vocal-tethered album, Similes, diffused song structure into limpid pools. “How does the motion make me last?” he asked on that album, contrasting the eternality of the spirit with the ceaseless business of the physical body. But his songs, however beautiful, were more about stillness than motion, more about transcending the cadences of heartbeat and breath than harnessing them. Martin Eden, Cooper’s new solo enterprise, sets evanescent atmospheres into motion, adding a locomotive beat to what has been, in Eluvium, a timeless stasis.

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