Ambient composer
Matthew Cooper
takes his work under the
Eluvium
moniker to a more cybernetic place on
(Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality
, focusing on humanity's fraught relationship with technology, algorithms, and operating systems. Luckily, this focus doesn't manifest as an especially futuristic reading of
's always gently beautiful sound but as a sophisticated reflection of
Cooper
's ruminations on technological themes delivered with warm strings and fluttering electronics. Members of the
American Contemporary Music Ensemble
and the
Budapest Scoring Orchestra
provide the string arrangements, brass, gliding harp plucks, and other classical touches to the album, clashing with cold synth patches and searing atmospheric sounds on "Phantasia Telephonics" and leading the anthemic charge of the powerfully beautiful "Vibration Consensus Reality (for Spectral Multiband Resonator)." It's more difficult to parse out the organic strings from the digital ones on "Void Manifest," a song that further drives the record's themes of technological dysphoria with a cast of computerized voices that gradually fade in and out of stretches of passionate operatic singing from
Charlotte Mundy
.
Golden Retriever
's
Jonathan Sielaff
adds texture to the album's electro-acoustic feel with his occasional bass clarinet contributions.
Sielaff
takes the spotlight on "Scatterbrains," a cautious and open piece that recalls the early new age pathfinding of the
ECM
label in the 1970s. As with much of the wide-ranging
catalog,
scatters cinematic inflections of hope, loss, and yearning into
. Though his inspirations might have been dystopic thoughts of algorithms and robotic interaction, the buoyant strings and inspiring compositions ultimately mirror human nature's endless questing more than anything else. Like so much of
's work, these songs present raw depictions of hope at odds with sadness, only this time underscored with a palpable concern about how quickly the future is arriving and how little control human beings might have over it. ~ Fred Thomas