Talk Amongst the Trees

DIW
"Sentimental romantics, classical music snobs and jaded indie-rockers can all appreciate this surprising turn from Eluvium..."

Product Description
Working with a limited palette of guitars and piano, Eluvium dropped 'Lambent Material,' a masterpiece of aquatic drones and fractured neoclassical compositions, in 2002. He followed it a year later with a brief album of solo piano suites that turned everyone’s expectations upside-down. Not quite classical and certainly not ambient in the common sense, 'An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death' garnered the kind of jaw-dropping acclaim that typically overlooks like-minded minimalist artists. This was a breath of fresh air for Matthew Cooper, allowing him to dive deeper than ever before. Beneath the cold water glow, 'Talk Amongst the Trees' is a soundtrack for exploring the surface of your own ocean, slow-moving like the sand that runs through your fingers and incandescent like the most unique creatures of the sea.

Tracks:

New Animals From The Air
Show Us Your Homes
Area 41
Everything To Come
Calm Of The Cast-Light Cloud
Taken
We Say Goodbye To Ourselves
One

Album Description

Working with a limited palette of guitars and piano, Eluvium dropped 'Lambent Material,' a masterpiece of aquatic drones and fractured neoclassical compositions, in 2002. He followed it a year later with a brief album of solo piano suites that turned everyone's expectations upside-down. Not quite classical and certainly not ambient in the common sense, 'An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death' garnered the kind of jaw-dropping acclaim that typically overlooks like-minded minimalist artists. This was a breath of fresh air for Matthew Cooper, allowing him to dive deeper than ever before. Beneath the cold water glow, 'Talk Amongst the Trees' is a soundtrack for exploring the surface of your own ocean, slow-moving like the sand that runs through your fingers and incandescent like the most unique creatures of the sea.

Customer Reviews:

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.......2007-03-04

Guys this is just for eluvium fanatics..it's a good album but it's a seriously difficoult album..i am a fan but it's still hard for me to listen to this record often..i suggest ELUVIUM'S ''COPIA'' more than this one..to me the most stunning freakin' awesome devastating song of this album is TAKEN..the rest is pure ambient..good ambient..but only for fanatics

a dive into emotions.......2006-10-06

Temporary residence, the record label that holds eluvium described Matthew Cooper's music as "walls of sound that are so emotionally gripping that you might think its coming from inside you" and I personally think they are absolutely right. The opening track of talk amongst the trees, "new animals from the air" sets the mood for the rest of the album. The strong sounds fuel a whirlwind of emotions either uplifting or depressing triggering thoughts and inspirations. This album acquires a certain mood for it to really be appreciated, for me this is an open minded and personally productive state of mind. When listening to this album I found myself absorbing every sound that was being thrown at me and loosing myself in a kind of trance, really taking into account everything that the songs were made to do. As eluvium's music is all instrumental the cd booklet is without lyrics but this is compensated by some amazing short poems written by Phillip Cooper. The poems fit perfectly well with the music and only add as jigsaw pieces to the picturesque thoughts that the sounds provide. Talk amongst the trees is a record that puppeteers your heart, making its strings do as it wants, this album is definitely worth buying but only to be listened to with the most open of minds.

gorgeous.......2005-09-23

If ambient music is your thing or if you enjoy long, drawn-out and beautiful soundscapes, than the new Eluvium is for you and will most likely end up being one of your favorite albums of the year. I don't know how this guy manages to release an album a year but I hope he keeps the pace.

warm and fuzzy.......2005-03-08

Matthew Cooper (aka Eluvium) has released one album per year now for the past three years, and they don't always fall into a neat cubbyhole. His first album Lambent Material showed a couple very strong cards in terms of ambient electronic music, while his follow-up of Accidental Memory In Case Of Death moved in completely different directions as a short release of improvisational piano pieces that was hit or miss in terms of quality but still managed to show something new from the young artist.

Talk Amongst The Trees moves back in the direction of the first release from Cooper, and in terms of overall flow and composition it's light-years beyond his first release. With eight tracks that run almost an hour in length, it's also much more grand in scope, and while some pieces probably run a smidge long, the overall effect of the album is lovely. The album opens with the soft haze of "New Animals From The Air" as delayed guitar loops drift over warm washes of sound for almost twelve minutes. "Show Us Our Homes" again feels right at home on a bed of clouds as wafts of backwards guitar and rounded-off feedback form a semi-transparent fog of sound.

The middle section of the album is easily the strongest, and it's because of tracks like "Everything To Come," in which the soft squalls of feedback seem to mingle with each other in just the right ways while the almost seventeen-minute epic of "Taken" induces trancelike behavior with its simple but highly effective guitar arpeggio that seems to climb and climb without ever really going anywhere. The beauty of the latter track is one of simplicity, but the suggested movement of the track (through subtle builds in the background layers of the track) is what keeps the listener involved.

While most tracks on the release are content to drift and wander through different variations on the same sorts of fuzzy, flickering themes, it's also a comforting release that works so well because it doesn't break out of the hypnotic spell that it sets for itself from the beginning. While Lambent Material had a couple amazing tracks, it was also somewhat inconsistent in terms of overall sonics and how it progressed. This newest release doesn't have that problem at all, as it continues through the same, slightly blurry realm during the entire running length of the album. There aren't a lot of surprises, but there aren't any letdowns either. If you like your ambient music shimmering, this is the album for you.

(from almost cool music reviews)