Review Summary: Matthew Cooper ventures into darker terrain on this continuation of his drone/loop album series.
Matthew Cooper’s Eluvium is one of the more generally popular ambient acts from the past couple decades, and I think that’s largely due to his crossover ready “indie classical” compositions. But he’s always demonstrated a keen ear for drone and tape loop experimentation, which he tends to explore more thoroughly on conceptual releases, like the sprawling hour-long lullaby
Static Nocturne, or the different-every-listen
Shuffle Drones. His latest series of albums, entitled
Virga, have been his most immersive plunge into cloudy and freeform ambiance yet, replacing virtually any notion of melody with spellbinding textures borne from generative tones, loops, and synth shadowplay.
The second instalment continues this motif, but somewhat surprisingly, side A of
Virga II contains Cooper’s darkest material to date. The deeply churning loops in “Hallucination I” wrap around each other in a vinelike way until the listener feels smothered, while the unsettling “Scarlet Hunter” sound like it’s cracked apart, the elements scattering into dramatic high and low sonic ranges, scraping above and softly pummeling underneath. From there,
Virga II turns towards the light and crests into calmer terrain. “Touch Returned” and “Virga II” are more lightweight takes on the same foggy formula, the latter building off a classically big-hearted Eluvium chord sequence that gently closes out the record. 18 years after his debut, Cooper shows a steady hand in this mode; more than anything, it feels like his main role is to restrain the swelling drones from becoming overwhelming, adding a hint of drama to these four pieces.
A few days before the album release, Cooper shared the official video for “Virga II”, simply featuring a POV shot of someone driving down a lonesome highway at night. Never mind that before the video came out, I was going to try to mangle that exact image into my own review; it serves as a perfect metaphor for the music itself, starting as a gravelly journey through the abyss, eventually meeting the first flickers of dawn.
Virga II might not change much from one minute to the next, but it’s still a worthwhile voyage.
