Ed Cooper — Vestibule

Composer Ed Cooper offers here an album titled Vestibule, released on the label Thanatosis, with a trio of short tracks one to two minutes long, and a pair of much longer pieces, roughly twenty-five minutes each. I would describe it as a minimalist soundscape, which is apparently performed by several musicians and arranged by Ed.

It is perhaps arranged on a computer, but the sounds are not synthetic in origin. They are processed voices, and other bodily sounds... The longer pieces centre around rhythmic bass pulsations, which, according to the liner notes, are the heartbeats of the performers. This immediately gives the recording a certain existential quality.

The timbres and production are raw and unformed, with thick globs of low-end overwhelming the speakers every time the heartbeats return, and the vocal sounds have the sort of murkiness which comes with drastically pitching sounds down. Each sound or gesture emerges only partly visible through mud. From what I can tell, those vocalising are at times humming or singing. It seems some kind of horn is likely being played as well, but filtered down so that only a faint low-frequency hum remains.

The short interlude tracks are thus far the highlight of the recording, as they do not overstay their welcome. These are apparently performed by cellist Ben Finlay, and are perhaps melody lines, but it's not as clear when the recordings have been slowed. Closer "The Suppression" is perhaps the most tuneful, with a sort of melancholy presence. The instrument has a reedy, grinding vibration when pitched down. The timbre can be interesting at times, but I still question the decision to pitch down essentially every sound on the recording.

The latter of the two long pieces, "... as far as... unloving still... down on your stomach...", centres around string drones primarily, although there are still heartbeats to be faintly heard. This is a more pleasant tone than the vocal murk of the previous piece, and when a fragment of folky melody from the strings becomes a sort of recurring motif, I find myself enjoying this recording in a way I haven't until this point. This piece is apparently performed by a quintet called the Octandre Ensemble, containing bass clarinets and string basses, so perhaps it is this group that is responsible for the comparable musicality of this piece. Ultimately, this one also occupies more time than it needs to, dwindling down to sparser activity in its second half.

This is a recording that manages to provide some food for thought in its experimental processes, but not much in the way of enjoyable or engaging sound. The first long piece is too simple to sustain attention for twenty-five minutes, and the instrumental recordings are processed in such a way that they lose all clarity, have many random low-frequency spikes, and seem to mask many of their potentially pleasant characteristics. The second of the two epic tracks nearly redeems the entire recording with the subtle nostalgia of its string melodies (courtesy of the Octandre Ensemble), but ultimately is overly vacant for its runtime as well. I become fatigued with the pitched-down sound, and it seems no instrument is allowed to sing with its natural pitch. All in all, an ambitious and thoughtful recording, but not necessarily one I can recommend.