Customer Reviews

Accidental Memory in the Case of Death

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This album is nothing short of awe inpiring bliss. Upon opening the plastic and peeling the seal off, the magic starts. The artwork is stark and beautiful. Very Tim Burton-esque. The listening experience is breathtaking. It is a half hour of the most beautiful piano peices ever composed. This album will be the soundtrack for many experiences in my life. Experience this masterpiece.

I really enjoyed the piano solos on this CD. There is a thoughtful tone and peaceful ambience to the pieces that is perfect for listening, contemplation, or background music, but the music completely avoids any stench of "new age." Beautiful piano pieces.

My only criticism of Cooper's performance is his (mis)use of pedals. He must keep his foot planted on the pedals too long or something because there is often an echoey hum in the music that sometimes muddles the beauty of sound.

Although I really like this CD and can see myself listening to it for a long time to come, I have to knock the rating down because to sell a 26 minute CD at $15 is highway robbery.

I first heard "Perfect Neglect in a Field of Statues" while listening to solo piano music on Pandora. I was immediately struck by the poor tone of the piano - muddy in the bass, plunky in the treble, and generally out of tune in the mid-range. I felt compelled to comment about it on Amazon. The Amazon reviews, however, all love the album. So to be fair and to find out what all the fawning was about, I listened to the whole album in its entirety.

My original impression stood firm. The piano used in this recording sounds terrible. Yes, the artist's pedal work leaves much to be desired but that's only a fraction of the problem. I realize not everyone has access to meticulously regulated Steinway concert grands, but this sounds like the neglected piano in grandma's basement. The issue is not either that only a single microphone was used and that the music wasn't extensively edited in the studio. I've heard better live recordings from a high school gymnasium with a cheap mic.

Moreover, the album just isn't very interesting. This is a classic example of, "Let's record two hours of piano playing and see what happens." In this case, the two hours only yielded 27 barely tolerable minutes for a record. I can only wonder how terrible the remaining hour and a half were that got left on the cutting room floor. A little preparation around the fundamentals of music - melody, harmony, rhythm, etc. - would go a long way to improving this album.

I was sold immediately after hearing 30-second clips of a few songs. Since then, I must have listened to this CD hundreds of times. The sounds are simple, they repeat, and it sounds very lo-fi (In fact, it was recorded in less than two hours using but a single microphone. No post-production of any kind was used; it is more or less live music). The more familiar these tunes become, the more I grow to love them. It is as if they have become mine, part of me.
It's like the soundtrack to a wonderful, bittersweet movie. So beautiful.

As another reviewer suggested, I recommend listening to this if you're a fan of piano or ambient music. It is ambient music played on the piano: leitmotifs are used with varying amounts of focus and repetition, so that the mind is free to wander during the less focused parts, then a repetition happens, drawing the listener into a semifocused trance. It's rather beautiful for this ambient effect, because the beginning of the leitmotif recalls the comfort and peacefulness of the whole song. The music also recalls somehow memories -- perhaps due to the keying, it feels nostalgic.

The faults are that the recording sounds more muffled than it should, and the notes are too discordant and overlapping throughout, leaving one always with the feeling that the conflicting notes will clear up, leaving peace, but instead the awkward tension continues. It's however still a an interesting artwork, because the melodies stay with one, if one can get past these difficulties.

I give it four stars because I like the novelty of using classical methods to play ambient music, the compositions are interesting though of course spare, and the issues are cosmetic while the musical ideas are strong.

Is the title a reordering of the phrase "A memory in the case of accidental death?" Is it an allusion to the desire of artists to be immortalized by their music, to encode memories in their works and live on?

Returning exactly one year after dropping one of the most consistently gorgeous ambient rock records of the last decade with 2003's Lambent Material, Eluvium's Matthew Cooper follows it up with, well, one of the most consistently gorgeous neoclassical records of the last quarter century. An entire album of haunting, intimate suites for solo piano, this album is perhaps even more emotionally gripping than his previous acclaimed work. Recorded in less than two hours using only one microphone and no overdubs, it is completely live, with no editing, mixing, mastering or post-production of any kind on the recording. It is this sparse, naked beauty that makes this record so breathtaking and so addictive. Well, that... and the totally mind-blowing artwork.

An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death is a bit different for Matthew Cooper AKA Eluvium: it is very piano-driven and different that the droning soundscapes of Lambent Material or Talk Amongst the Trees. However, it is still an excellent release that is worth checking out if you are fan of ambient or piano music. The album starts off beautifully and flows smoothly until the final two tracks, where it leaves such a strong impression that will make you want to listen to it all over again. Sometimes it is a wee bit repetitive, but when it is good, it is more than good - it takes you to another world.

It is not a perfect album, but it is worth the 5-star rating I am barely giving it.