Articles
Hatchback
Dennis Wilson
Michna Top 10

Albums
Alpha Aesar
The Alps
Anduin
Beaten By Them
Bible & Henry
Bird Show
Bitcrush
The Boats
Boduf Songs
Budd & Wright
Callers
Derek Carr
Matthew Robert Cooper
Cristal
Dreamsploitation
Gore
Hatchback
Inverz
Monika Kruse
Lights Out Asia
Miya Masaoka
Michna
Model 500
Mr Cooper
Near The Parenthesis
Patron and Patron
Procer Veneficus
Raglani
Red Snapper
Max Richter
Roots Manuva
Michael Santos
Sempervirens
Shed
Sleepingdog
Spect. Lore / Underjordiska
Andy Stott
Taub
The Third Man
Uzi & Ari
You May Die / Gifts Enola
Zèbra
Zilverhill

Compilations / Mixes
DJ /Rupture
Diaspora: Cottage Ind. 5
Total 9

EPs
John R Carlson
Intrusion
Keenhouse
Joe Lapaglia
Model 500
Duncan Ó Ceallaigh
Frank Omura
Shigeto
The Sight Below
Steinbrüchel
Van Der Papen
Warez

Matthew Robert Cooper: Miniatures
Gaarden Records

Since every one of Matthew Robert Cooper's Eluvium releases has highlighted a slightly different musical persona—the solo pianisms of An Accidental Memory In The Case Of Death followed by Talk Amongst The Trees' elegiac drones and Copia's neo-classical chamber settings, for example—the most curious thing about Miniatures isn't the degree to which it stylistically differs from his other works but why he opted to issue it under his birth name. It's an incidental point musically, however, and ultimately more a marketing issue for Gaarden Records than anything else. Hopefully no one'll be too misled by the title either, as only about half of the thirty-four-minute album's nine pieces could be classified as miniatures, if duration is used as a barometer that is. One thing that is different is that it's Cooper's first proper vinyl release (2000 copies with the first 1000 on coloured vinyl).

The collection begins strongly with a beatific organ-styled opener whose hypnotic ebb and flow points the listener skyward, and the slow and measured unfurl of the song's interwoven melodies proves to be as haunting as anything in the Eluvium catalogue. The subsequent pieces alternate between shorter interludes—three piano nocturnes (number two gentle, four dramatic, and eight romantic), a robust church organ piece (five), and gentle interlude of glassy tones (six)—and more elaborate set-pieces. In number three, strings swell into an oceanic mass while a slow-motion melody softly calls out its yearning theme at its center, and in seven, the repeating tinkle of an Eno-like melody floats along the surface of a peaceful, ambient-styled piano meditation (that Cooper, for whatever reason, clutters with extraneous field noises); miniature nine ends the album gracefully with sweeping melancholia clothed in a full-bodied orchestral arrangement.

October 2008