ERLAND COOPER has announced HETHER BLETHER, the third and final album in a trilogy of releases shaped by the islands where he grew up, due for release on standard and limited-edition vinyl, CD and digitally on 29 May 2020 via Phases. In addition, Erland has announced a UK tour for the autumn, full dates as below.
Featuring new poetry by John Burnside, written after a trip to Orkney with Erland which was documented on the BBC Radio 4 programme Wild Music, as well as spoken word from the award-winning musician Kathryn Joseph plus ambient tape and modular synth work from Hiroshi Ebina, the track draws us into Erland’s world with a slow-moving portrait video directed by longtime collaborator Alex Kozobolis.
Hailing from the archipelago of Orkney in Scotland, the contemporary composer and
multi-instrumentalist has so far in this trilogy explored the birdlife [SOLAN GOOSE in 2018] the sea [SULE SKERRY in 2019] and now, on HETHER BLETHER, he turns his attention to the land and its people. Named after a hidden island in folklore, said to rise green and fertile from time to time from the foam, and inspired in essence by Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown, filmmaker Margaret Tait and composer Peter Maxwell Davies before him, this final album is a celebration of the islands’ memories held in timeless landscape, community, myth and mythology.
HETHER BLETHER looks to the past through the stories of the island, and to the present and future through its people, weaving elements of Solan Goose and Sule Skerry, bringing them together in a full circle around the cycles of the changing seasons. Throughout the
triptych, Erland explores a restorative path in the rhythm and poetry of the everyday, deep within a land and community at the edge of the world. On HETHER BLETHER, as on the albums before, song titles are taken from local dialect and acknowledge the places and stories of the island [Noup Head, Rousay, Longhope] as well as the people themselves [Peedie Breeks, which translates as ‘children’].
The opening track, Noup Head, introduces the listener to the story of the title track’s hidden island via a young girl that went missing one day. Her family found her in a storm, on an island emerging from the fog. On the new island, she was grown up, with children of her own. She gives her family a stake to enable them to return to see her, but it becomes lost in the sea, forever. “A cold sting on her skin / that takes her back / to something she forgot / in childhood,” reads Kathryn Joseph, deeply longing in her delivery of Burnside’s words.
The girl reappears, as memories do, as the album ebbs and flows. She’s there in Burnside’s poetry on the beautiful Longhope, in “The echo of a child / suspended in a web / of kelp and feathers / a long-lost sister waiting for the tide / to guide her home”. She’s there in the swell of the Arco string quartet on Rousay, named after the island on which the girl was born. She’s there also in the album’s title track, where Erland sings his lyrics against the soft swell of his piano and Moog. “From time to time you rise out of the sea,” he sings, “never take your eyes off of me”.
Erland’s own voice is a point of strength and vulnerability on this final part of the trilogy:
SOLAN GOOSE didn’t feature his vocals at all; SULE SKERRY only featured them briefly; here, they are given room to breathe, to invite us to new paths of discovery and exploration. When they hymn “a sweet isle in my life” on Hildaland, we go along with them, finding the inhabitants that were said to retreat to a secret undersea kingdom every winter, just as Erland retreated from the real world through the soft waves of his music.
HETHER BLETHER ends with Erland singing a lyric borrowed from celebrated film composer Clint Mansell on a song with a title that sounds full of intent: Where I Am Is Here, a work about time and memory, its repeated phrase “Love now more than ever” feels like an urgent demand for our times. It’s a natural end-point for a project that began with one man needing to retreat from the chaos of everyday life, to return to where he came from, taking all of us with him, to the very roots of ourselves. Its last line “Time will show you how” also reminds us how the past and present have always connected in our lives, bringing our experiences full circle. It also reminds us how deeply we have dived, how we have fished in such rich, vivid water, in the few short years since we met the Solan Goose, ventured bravely to Sule Skerry, and headed further to HETHER BLETHER. But Erland hasn’t left the Orkneys behind him just yet. “It’s still with me,” he says. “I’m only just coming to terms with where it’s taken me – from a place of necessary escape, to a very different world.”
HETHER BLETHER | TRACKLISTING
- Noup Head
- Rousay
- Peedie Breeks
- Skreevar
- Longhope
- Linga Holm
- Hildaland
- Hether Blether
- Hamnavoe
- Where I Am Is Here
ERLAND COOPER | LIVE
SEPTEMBER
Thu 24 MANCHESTER Hallé St Peter’s
Fri 25 LEEDS College of Music
Sat 26 BIRMINGHAM St Paul’s Church
Sun 27 STROUD St Laurence’s Church
Mon 28 EDINBURGH Summerhall
Tue 29 EDINBURGH Summerhall
Wed 30 BRISTOL St George’s
OCTOBER
Thu 01 BRIGHTON St George’s Church
Fri 02 CANTERBURY Gulbenkian Theatre
Fri 09 BELFAST First Presbyterian Church
Tickets are on sale now at: www.erlandcooper.com/
RECENT PRAISE
“… at once calming and euphoric, with a beauty that’s its own justification …” UNCUT
“… a record of simple beauty, exploring the place where electronic and classical music can co-habit …” THE QUIETUS
“… a meditative, transportive experience, an ethereal swoon which imagines Sigur Rós remixed by Bibio; it makes you wonder where Cooper will take you next …” Q MAGAZINE
“… considered, crafted and explorative of details that only someone with A true affinity can delve into; if the intent was to create a kind of magic, he does so …” LOUD & QUIET
“… with Sule Skerry, he’s expanding his palette, retaining an ambient quality, while bringing in a more epic, moving scope …” THE 405
“… nature’s songwriter …” THE GUARDIAN
Pre-order HETHER BLETHER: https://erlandcooper.ffm.to/hetherblether
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