Eluvium

Three years without new material can be a lifetime (and sometimes a death knell) for musicians. After receiving critical acclaim and being invited on tour with bands like Explosions In The Sky, some might also think it strange to choose to disappear for a while. Eluvium, however, did just that.

With the success of his fourth full-length album, Copia, and nothing but promise ahead of him, Matthew Cooper finished his worldwide tour and then seemed to take a long break. This month, Stereo Subversion learns that appearances aren’t always what they seem. The man behind the Portland-based ambient act explains that all the time away was spent working behind the scenes. Here, he talks about releasing 2008’s Miniatures under his own name, his plans for performing Similes, and how it’s taken multiple years to release a follow-up because he wrote and scrapped an entirely separate Eluvium record in between.

SSv: Let’s do some catching up first, since Copia was released in 2007. It was seen as your grandest album, thanks to the inclusion of brass instruments and more bass. Pitchfork wrote that it seemed more “cinematic” than your previous records. Was that at all intentional?

Matthew Cooper: I don’t know, to be honest. Usually, when creating, a lot of times it doesn’t start with a specific intention so much as it does a kind of mood that I feel or a sound that I’m hearing. For example, just by walking around and living life, themes start cropping up in my head. And I kind of just go for the best way to interpret these themes. I worry about what exactly it is that’s coming across a little bit later, applying intentions afterward. I try not to question the direction that I’m heading as it’s happening, really.

SSv: Are there any visuals attached at all? I know you work with [wife and artist] Jeannie Paske frequently. Do you work together, let her interpret things on her own, or does it differ from project to project?

Matthew: It kind of depends project to project. My wife does actually do a lot of the artwork. Sometimes she just has a painting that she’s already done that seems to just fit perfectly. Other times, like with Similes, I ask her for something I’m kind of picturing in my head, and she does her own interpretation.

But there’s also sort of visual inspiration that happens otherwise. Just, as I say, I do a lot of walking. [Laughs] So looking at nature or others things that surrounding me can sort of cue up with sounds in my head and kind of create a bit of a scheme bit by bit.

SSv: And how has the direction of your music changed in the last two or three years? What’s inspired you to write since the last album?

Matthew: For Similes, it’s the longest time since I’ve waited to put out anything. Or since I’ve put out a new Eluvium album. Actually, before I was working on Similes, I was working on another record that I guess I would describe as the follow-up to Copia, in a way, where it did have more orchestration, and it was kind of longer, even more drawn out orchestration. I got fed up with it right before I finished it and felt that I’d hit a stasis. It seemed like all of the ideas were coming a little too easy to me. And, so, I was talking with my wife about it, voicing my frustration, and she was like, ‘Well, why don’t you do what it is that you really want to be doing?’

That’s how Similes started. Because I had a lot more time, and I was working on a few other things instead of Eluvium albums, it kind of came from just sort of sitting and thinking. That sounds rather simple. Certain, [more specific] ideas do come up, but it really cropped up out of the idea of just being lost in thought. That was the direction that I wanted to take with the new album was something that sort of described the idea of not really having any specific thought – that sort of thinking about thought.

SSv: Did any of the original songs for the Copia follow-up make it onto the Miniatures album?

Matthew: No, Miniatures was something that happened even prior to Copia, where I was actually writing stuff that I originally wanted to change over and have all the music be for an orchestra. I was kind of wanting to work with some musicians in Portland to flesh out the ideas, but as time went on, my mind started moving on to other things. It’s tough for me to stay on one idea and live in this one idea for very long. A friend of mine was starting up a vinyl record label. He asked if I had anything, and I said, ‘Well, I’ve got these sketches I’ve been working on,’ and just from hearing them enough, I’d come to sort of like them as they are. That’s how that really ended up existing.

SSv: You never performed anything from Miniatures, though. It was sort of a vinyl-only, one-time thing…

Matthew: I did do the last piece one time in Austin, actually, but aside from that I never did any specific promotion or touring for it.

SSv: So with the exception of a performance you did last year, you haven’t performed or done much live since your last album either. It’ll all be fresh.

Matthew: Yeah, with Copia, I toured the world for a year or so. After that, I did a little extra one-offs, but then I cut out performances and had to start turning down different things, so I could work on a new project. I consider quite a new direction for me, and it’s hard for me to be totally enveloping myself in this new idea while going out and trying to perform these older ideas as well. So I didn’t do any extra performing.

SSv: Does it ever start to work in reverse? While your composing, do you consider how you’ll play new material live at all?

Matthew: [Laughs] I’m learning that it should. I think it was after Talk Amongst The Trees that I started realizing that. When I first started, I never had any intentions to perform live. But then bands that I really liked and who became friends of mine were asking me to do tours, so I just ended up doing them. And, yeah, after Talk Amongst The Trees, I started thinking: okay, you should really consider, if you want to play these songs live, how that’s going to happen, especially just being one person on stage.

I’ve yet to actually listen to myself when doing that. I always say it right when I get ready to start working on something, but I never end up following those rules. Even with Similes, that’s been a new thing.

SSv: Have you considered bringing other players out with you, or do you prefer solo performances?

Matthew: We’re going to do a tour for that, and I’ve decided to hire on a couple of other musicians to go on tour with me and present it a little bit better that I would be able to by myself.

SSv: Is it partly because of the instrumentation? I’ve listened to the two songs already online – “Leaves Eclipse The Light” and “The Motion Makes Me Last” – and there’s more percussion and lyricism. Does the change in the sound change how you approach presenting the album?

Matthew: It’s not necessarily [prompted by] this record moreso than any of the other records. I just feel as though I’ve done the one-person on stage thing, trying to shove as many sounds into one situation as possible as much as I can. Even when we do this tour, I hope to be ale to play some of the older stuff that I wasn’t able to perform live before, because I didn’t have other people. There are multiple vocal lines all at once on the new record, too, so just having a couple extra people to help with that is going to be good.

SSv: Are there tour dates worked out yet?

Matthew: We’re starting to shoot for May for the U.S., but there are no specifics scheduled yet.

SSv: In an older interview with Coke Machine Glow, you said that for Accidental Memory, you weren’t even interested in playing live shows as much as figuring out the album’s purpose and “why you were doing what you doing.” Do your goals still change from album to album?

Matthew: Usually there’s sort of two sides to that for me, or there’s starting to be. Normally the goal for an album was just to create it and push myself into doing something that I haven’t done before, to learn as I create. Now it’s getting to a point where I do have to be aware of the other side of it.

I’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by people who have really helped me to get tours together or to help me do other things. Now that it’s becoming an actual lifestyle, that I get to do tours and release records as my job, I’ve definitely started taking the other side into account on my own, with this record. That’s something completely new to me. Since I’ve worked by myself all the time, I’ve never really been great at distributing time and working with other people in these manners. I’ve always been able to do things as they come and when I felt like doing them, so it’s a new challenge to able to organize the business side outside of just the artistic.

SSv: Which is necessary, if you’re saying you’ve pushed yourself as far as possible being completely solo for so long…

Matthew: I want what I’m doing to be about more than just expression and/or business. But, really, as a human being, you sort of want to learn and grow. So I guess it’s all a part of that for me, now: pushing myself into things I’m cautious about and seeing what happens and seeing what I can take away from it.

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