Eluvium Talk Amongst the Trees

• Words: Dave Segal
• Label: Temporary Residence
• XLR8R Rating: /10

Seattle guitarist/pianist Matthew Cooper (Eluvium) is becoming one of the most adept ambienceurs of this young decade. His third release, Talk Amongst The Trees, conjures an expansive pathos with a minimalist‘s economy of means. This eight-track disc alludes to some of history‘s most sublime dronemeisters, but never blatantly replicates them. The mournful, mellifluous swells of "Show Us Our Homes," for example, obliquely evoke William Basinski‘s elegiac symphonies to decay, while "Calm Of The Cast-Light Cloud" sends gorgeous My Bloody Valentine-shaped whorls of emotional ambiguity skyward. Poignant enough to rub microtones with Eno‘s beatless classics, Trees stands tall among the era‘s elite sound paintings.