In less than two weeks, the new double album from Portland based ambient composer Matthew Cooper aka Eluvium will see the light of day. Nightmare Ending is the follow-up to his 2010’s album Smiles and drops on May 14th via Temporary Residence.
‘Happiness’, the closing track from the album, sees Eluvium collaborate with Ira Kaplan of Yo La Tengo. Here’s what Cooper said about this joint effort:
“When I wrote ‘Happiness’, I knew that vocals would play an important part, but I wasn’t sure how to express them myself. Being the last song on the album, would it be a grand statement – or a smaller piece focused on minute details? At some point in time the fantasy of having Ira singing just came to me: “That would be amazing,” I thought. I mentioned this off-handedly (and most likely a little jokingly) to Jeremy at Temporary Residence, and he responded by saying something to the effect of “Well…why don’t we look into it? The next thing I knew, Ira was responding with words of affection about the music and then sending me recordings that he and James (McNew, also in Yo La Tengo) had made. I was astounded at how close to home the words felt; somehow Ira had managed to express this feeling of having courage and finding comfort in a way I would have never imagined.”
Listen to ‘Happiness’ beneath.