(le) poisson rouge

Introduced in 2003, Matthew Cooper’s Eluvium moniker was an unexpected breath of fresh air to an ambient electronic scene that was quickly losing steam. Influenced by neoclassical icons like Erik Satie and Philip Glass, Eluvium snuck emotionally stirring melodies into a blizzard of haze and fuzz, and incidentally became a celebrated composer oft-mentioned in the same breath as his heroes.

After the release of Copia in 2007, Eluvium toured for over a year, often supporting labelmates and close friends Explosions In The Sky. By the middle of 2008, Cooper was craving a new direction. After five albums in as many years, he was perhaps feeling a little complacent. For the first time since its inception, a year would pass without a new Eluvium album. In fact, three years would pass. During that time, Cooper released a stirring solo album (Miniatures), scored a major motion picture (Some Days Are Better Than Others) and released a jaw-dropping deluxe vinyl box set.

After completing and subsequently scrapping what was to be the follow-up to Copia, Cooper took a courageous creative leap with Similes, an 8-song album featuring three key musical elements previously uncharted by Eluvium: percussion, a verse-chorus song structure, and singing. For a celebrated experimental musician, it was just about the bravest and scariest direction to go. In this way, Similes is the most truly experimental Eluvium album yet, and also the most accessible.

Written, performed and recorded as always by Cooper at his Watership Sounds studio, Similes marries Eluvium’s trademark dream-like aura with Cooper’s unique, laconic vocals, akin to an especially contemplative Ian Curtis with trace reflections of Magnetic Fields and Brian Eno. It is the most daring – and ultimately most rewarding – work of Eluvium’s impressive and prolific career.

Listen: The Motion Makes Me Last

Cellist Clarice Jensen completed her bachelor's and master's degrees at The Juilliard School, as a student of Joel Krosnick. She began studying cello at the age of three and piano when she was five in her hometown of Independence, Missouri. While firmly rooted in classical performance, Ms. Jensen is also an enthusiastic advocate for the performance of new music. She is the artistic director of ACME, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, a group dedicated to the outstanding performance of contemporary classical music. Recent and upcoming ACME performances include a residency at The Whitney Museum of American Art throughout the month of June 2008, and concerts at The Noguchi Museum, Le Poisson Rouge, and Miller Theatre. ACME has performed previously at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Cornelia Street Café, and a variety of gallery spaces.

The New York Times has written that ACME plays “electrifyingly,” and Time Out New York reports, “polished and playful, its programs are a broad-minded mix of rigor and eclecticism,” and, “the ACME roster has consistently featured some of New York’s brightest, busiest players . . . And Jensen has earned a sterling reputation for her fresh, inclusive mix of minimalists, maximalists, eclectics and newcomers.”

In addition to her engagements with ACME, Ms. Jensen performs with the New Juilliard Ensemble, Continuum, the Argento New Music Project, Axiom, the International Music Ensemble, the Avian Orchestra, Columbia Composers, Lost Dog Ensemble, and the Wordless Music Series, among others. As a soloist and chamber musician, she has performed in all manner of venues in New York, from Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Alice Tully Hall, to Joe’s Pub, the Brooklyn Lyceum, the Tenri Cultural Center, and the Isamu Noguchi Museum.

Ms. Jensen performed the U.S. premiere of Guo Wenjing's Concertino for Cello and Ensemble as part of the Lincoln Center Festival, the world premiere of Dimitri Yanov-Yanovsky's Hearing Solution for cello and ensemble as part of the Silk Road "Artist in Residence" program, the U.S. premiere of Roger Reynold's Process and Passion for cello, violin and computer, the world premiere of Donald Martino's Rhapsody for cello, vibraphone and piano, and the U.S. Premiere of Kevin Volans’ Shiva Dances for string quartet.

She has participated in master classes with composers Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt, and Ned Rorem, and with a number of cellists including Yo Yo Ma, Harvey Shapiro and Colin Carr. She was a finalist in the Stulberg International String Competition, the Kingsville Young Performers Competition, and has performed as soloist with the Kansas City Symphony, the Independence Symphony, the Overland Park Symphony, and the World Youth Symphony Orchestra at the Interlochen Arts Academy. She also served as principal cellist for two years at the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italy.

Skilled at improvising and creating original string arrangements, Clarice Jensen has performed with pop and rock musicians including Grizzly Bear, Silversun Pickups, singer-songwriter Teddy Thompson, and pop star Mandy Moore live in concert as well as on MTV Unplugged, the Oxygen Network, The Late Show with David Letterman, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. She has recorded with the Arcade Fire, Ratatat, Grizzly Bear, Hole, Tyondai Braxton of Battles, Blame the Patient, Jihae, electronica duo Matmos, and can also be heard on Nico Muhly's Speaks Volumes album. She has performed recently with artists including Jóhann Jóhannsson, Dustin O'Halloran, Shudder To Think, Stars of the Lid, Hauschka, and Max Richter.

Past roles include production coordinator for Björk, working mainly on the soundtrack for Drawing Restraint 9, the first collaboration between Björk and her partner, the filmmaker and artist Matthew Barney.

Brooklynite Julianna Barwick’s voice is high, lucid and vaguely spiritual, like that of a child in a Christian-themed horror film. Her songs feature hardly any discernible words, yet few local musicians are so vocally oriented. On her self-released Sanguine, Barwick employs a guitar pedal to loop her voice, effectively creating her own backing choir through a modest four-track. Her overlapping vocals—almost entirely devoted to desperate Scrabble ploys like ahh or ooh—mesh together in a lovely blur. While Barwick rarely mimics the sound of an instrument, her web of vocals ultimately fills the role traditionally held by a band. -Time Out New York