On Eluvium

My roommate from last year has gotten me into quite a bit of excellent and interesting music that would normally be outside my realm of interest. One of my favorite such artists is Eluvium, a one-man act playing ambient music. I've especially been enjoying his latest album, Copia, recently.

Copia is a highly enjoyable listening experience: quiet, soothing, and contemplative. As ambient music, its simplicity and the slow pace of its songs let it fade into the background, but its majestic beauty can hold your attention just as well as more active music. This is great music for thinking, doing homework, or getting a filling.

The synthesizers used in Copia are reminiscent of an orchestra, but trade the complexity of classical music for simple, gently rolling melodies. Amreik is dominated by the sound of brass, emphasizing the dignity of the orchestral sounds used. Indoor Swimming at the Space Station lays quiet piano over string and woodwind sounds, and Seeing You Off the Edges focuses on densely layered strings that interweave in exceedingly pleasing ways.

Prelude for Time Feelers (don't you love these names?) keeps the background strings but has more a focus on a simple piano melody. Requiem on Frankfort Ave. is a quieter interlude before the amazingness of Radio Ballet, which eschews the synth sounds altogether and is simply three minutes of beautiful piano playing. Then come two interludes; (Intermission) is largely ambient sound effects, and After Nature is a more classical-sounding song with a focus on strings.

Reciting the Airships again contrasts beautiful piano with thickly layered synthesizers in the background, to amazing effect. Ostinato has always sounded, to me, like the first 40 or so seconds of Where the Streets Have No Name by U2, played by an organ and extended to 6 minutes. After one more rainy interlude, Repose in Blue ends the album in epic fashion, starting small but building to a tremendous, fireworks-driven conclusion.

If you're looking for exciting, dynamic music to jam to, this is not it. Copia is slow-moving, wordless music to be enjoyed quietly, in the background of something else or (even better) on its own. My descriptions don't really do it justice; though simple and highly repetitive (songs sound pretty similar all the way through), this is amazing music that really has to be heard to be believed. Highly recommended.