Erland Cooper
Erland Cooper, multi-talented Orcadian, announces UK dates and new video Getintothis’ Rick Leach with the details.
Following live shows, which included sold out London Barbican and Edinburgh performances, Erland Cooper embarks on his first UK tour this autumn on dates that will see him joined by his multi-instrumental ensemble.
The tour includes a unique appearance at Glasgow Mackintosh Queen’s Cross Church, a stunning building designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the late 1890s.
Hailing from the archipelago of Orkney in Scotland, Erland Cooper explores the natural world of birds, landscape and place, manifesting in an immersive collection of music, words and imagery.
Originally part of acclaimed bands The Magnetic North and Erland and the Carnival, he has a diverse musical background.
His first solo album, Solan Goose (which made the Getintothis Albums of the Year list in 2018), was an ode to escapism, written to ease personal anxiety working in a busy city through soothing piano, electronics, strings and wild bird calls.
His celebrated second record, Sule Skerry, turned his attention to the North Sea, and Seachange completes Part III of a trilogy of albums about shaped by his childhood home the Orkney Islands and, in particular, by the air, the sea and the land.
This October he released Seachange, an ambient companion to Sule Skerry. Seachange is a seamless sonic poem, evoking the place and memory of the record that came before it.
Erland Cooper’s Seachange
Seachange was created in collaboration with producer, artist and guitarist Leo Abrahams, who guests on Sule Skerry and, as with Murmuration (the collaboration with William Doyle that accompanied Solan Goose), Seachange is a continuous ambient work, split over three movements, or Tides.
As Cooper explains about Seachange: “It’s just a different perspective, or way of seeing. I imagine this music being created by placing recyclable source material into the North Sea and watching it become torn, pulled apart, diluted, stretched, weathered and then reassembled in an Orkney Geo.
It creates a different form, with dissolved and overlapping melodies that eventually disappear into granules like plankton. This record is an upcycling of sounds, themes and layers into a new collaborative work.”
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Cooper also works across multi-arts projects including gallery, film and installations, most recently scoring Nest, a giant, kinetic light and sound installation opening London’s first borough of culture.
He has also recently announced a new collaboration, this time for the Young Vic production of Portia Coughlan due to run from September 16 to October 31 2020.
Invited by the director Carolyn Byrne, he will compose the score to Marina Car’s play, with Academy Award nominee Ruth Negga making her Young Vic debut in the title role.
In addition, Cooper will explore the natural world of his homeland through an evocative mix of music, words and imagery in An Orkney Triptych at London Barbican on June 13 2020.
Erland Cooper UK tour dates:
- November 17: Central Library, Lancaster
- November 20: Band on The Wall, Manchester
- November 21: Arnolfini, Bristol
- November 22: Unitarian Church, Brighton
- November 24: Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
- November 30: Mackintosh Queen’s Cross Church, Glasgow
- December 2: Sage 2, Gateshead
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