In May, Matthew Robert Cooper is releasing a new Eluvium album, (Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality. Until the album’s out, he’s sharing two new tracks from it every month. So far, we’ve gotten the pairings of “Escapement” and “Swift Automatons,” followed by “Vibration Consensus Reality (For Spectral Multiband Resonator)” and “Scatterbrains,” and last month’s were “Phantasia Telephonics” and “The Violet Light.”

Today’s tracks are “Void Manifest” and “Clockwork Fables.” Cooper had a bit to say about both:

“Void Manifest”: The main musical theme from Void Manifest had been a work in progress for quite a while but it just felt like something that no matter how much it was worked on just wasn’t fitting into the musical or narrative world of this album. I couldn’t figure out the missing thread until one day while out walking and listening I heard a secondary theme present itself to me in a repetitive syllabic motif. I began looking for language to use for the lyrical content and decided it would be interesting to algorithmically pull words from years of notes of jumbled and scribbled down notions, ideas, theories, concepts that I had been considering while working on the album, which had become a bit of a maddening blend of sought after meanings, inspirations and discourse. Charlotte Mundy (of TAK ensemble) gracefully agreed to work with me to create the vocal recordings, which involved a mixture of singing and other noises. Her willingness and openness was a godsend, and her translation of the work made it truly come alive.

“Clockwork Fables”: This track is a return to musical phrases presented in Phantasia Telephonics. It was developed from various mutations on those themes and composed for player-piano. The title is a reference to narrative suggestions from the beginning of the album being considered as stories from a long time ago.

Listen below.

(Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality is out 5/12 on Temporary Residence.