False Readings On

Eluvium (neé Matthew Cooper) is known as an ambient musician, but don't let that fool you: this is a scary and beautiful noise record. Cooper made this as an oblique response to the increasing fracturing of reality in daily life, and it's like hearing a global anxiety attack. You get walls of harsh noise, swelling sturm-und-drang drones, piercing sorprano voice-like textures, and crescendoes everywhere. This is a soundtrack for a Koyaanisqatsi updated to reflect our solipsistic phone drone age. Put it on at a frat party. No words, no FCCs. Faves: 1, 2, 4, 7, 11.

1. *(4:23)—Starts quiet, then woozy organ drone bursts in at the half-minute mark. Really loud piano, soaring voice-like melodies. (I don't think it's an actual person singing.)
2. *(7:36)—Frantic Philip Glass synths, roaring drones, slamming noises. Builds into a wall of scraping noise.
3. (0:59)—Brief, watery drone.
4. *(7:21)—A little like 2, but prettier and more wistful, though with even more jarring bursts of quasi-vocal melody.
5. (4:06)—Roaring, melodic noise wall.
6. (4:29)—Halting, with choir textures and THX synths.
7. *(8:52)—Oceans of static, with bass drones and choirs building and dropping out repeatedly.
8. (1:22)—Ghostly, windy drones. Human speech lost in decay and noise.
9. (6:43)—Majestic, ringing, staticky, almost triumphant drone. Feels like something from Nightmare Ending.
10. (3:09)—Simple piano, field recordings of rain. Warm accompanying drones.
11. *(17:23)—Fades in with a choir and soft drones. Gets louder until the halfway point, and then it starts getting noisy. By 12 minutes it's pure harsh noise wall, victorious and tragic like an empire about to collapse under it's own hubris. Over-the-top, awe-inspiring, terrifying.