Erland Cooper
Erland Cooper has new music available and a UK tour to promote, Getintothis’ Peter Goodbody has the gen on this talented Orcadian.
Following the release of Sule Skerry, one of BBC 6Music’s Albums of the Day and Rough Trade’s Album of the Week, and after praise for his recent live shows which included sell out Barbican and Edinburgh performances, Erland Cooper has announced details of his first UK tour.
The dates will see Cooper joined by his multi-instrumentalist ensemble, and will include Sheffield’s Sensoria festival, Bristol’s Arnolfini and a unique performance at Glasgow’s Mackintosh Queen’s Cross Church, a stunning building designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the late 1890s.
Dates this year have so far included a transcendent and sold-out Barbican Milton Court Hall show, an intimate Rough Trade East performance and a return to home soil, at Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall, described by The Skinny in their 5* review as “music written as a way for its writer to find peace in an anarchic world. Tonight, the Queen’s Hall becomes that safe haven, a sanctuary from the storm raging outside.”
Sule Skerry is the second album in a triptych shaped by his childhood home, the Orkney Islands, and in particular by the air, sea and land, as it was celebrated by Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown. Last year’s solo debut, Solan Goose paid homage to the birdlife of Orkney (the air), and on Sule Skerry, the multi-instrumentalist turns his attention to the North Sea.
The album includes 6Music playlisted track ‘First of the Tide‘, a collaboration with electronic musician and producer Benge (John Foxx, Gazelle Twin, John Grant) whose Moog Polymoog synthesiser was re-amped through a 5,000-year-old Neolithic cairn in Orkney as well as ‘Spoot Ebb‘, named after a particular spring tide that ebbs and flows far enough out to allow spoots (razor fish) to be caught with ease and collected on shore and album opener, ‘Haar’.
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Erland Cooper explains: “It’s a record about the sea, our relationship with the outside world, forces outside of our control but it’s also about creating a nest within that, nurturing and protecting our own sea havens, those sheltered bays, those safe places. Always returning back in some form, as we step in and out daily”
Sule Skerry is out now on recycled vinyl, CD and download.
ERLAND COOPER UK DATES
Sep 29 – Sheffield, Sensoria Festival
Nov 17 – Lancaster, Lancaster Central Library
Nov 20 – Manchester, Band on the Wall
Nov 21 – Bristol, Arnolfini
Nov 22 – Brighton, Unitarian Church
Nov 24 – Leeds, Brudenell Social Club
Nov 30 – Glasgow, Mackintosh Queen’s Cross Church
Dec 2 – Gateshead, Sage Two
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