[Matthew who helps out with the Toad Sessions and all the work which needs doing for the label has kindly written this week's Sunday Supplement.  I think he's angry about something - let the rage out Matthew, let it out!]

Similes is Matthew Robert Cooper’s fifth album under the Eluvium title and it’s just, er, amazing. I personally think this is the best thing he’s done so far in his career. He recorded an album under his full name entitled Miniatures back in ’08 which was just beautiful, and he’s also part of Concert Silence which is purely unedited improvisational work with his friend Charles Buckingham – it can be downloaded for free here – I couldn’t recommend it higher. He’s also doing the score for the film ‘Some Days Are Better Than Others’, which looks really intriguing.

The first thing I think I should talk about is the new direction of the album and the sort of mixed response it seems to be getting from a lot of folk. Previously Cooper’s work hasn’t featured any vocals at all, typically just ambient guitar, synth instruments and piano pieces. I think this came as a bit of a shock looking at some of the ‘shouts’ from people on Last.fm and such. I think it’s really fucking pathetic, to be honest. I hate ‘fans’ in most cases, but these fuckers are just too much. I don’t usually give much attention to comments on ‘community’ type things such as youtube and Last.fm etc, because it mostly just fucks me off and depresses me – can’t really be doing with it.

What was I saying? Oh yeah, the vocals. Well fuck those sour pussed twats up their Nazi fucking arseholes, because the vocals are brilliant. They add a whole new level of beauty to the sound and it’s really rewarding to hear someone have the confidence to just come out and do that.

The album starts off with the two tracks that’ve been circling the internet in promotion of the album for the past two months – ‘Leaves Eclipse The Light’ and ‘The Motion Makes Me Last’. Those two, I think, have been the cause of all the commotion. I think they sit apart from the rest of the album as they feature quite a bit more acoustic instrumentation and they have more of a ‘pop’ structure to them. The album then delves lovingly into more ‘droney’ songs, which I think starts a really nice stroll down towards the end of the album. Maybe that’s a strange way to think about it – I certainly don’t mean it in a negative way – it really is just a nice touch of balance.

Since seeing Eluvium support Explosions in the Sky back in ’07 I’ve been smitten with most things ambient/experimental/post-rock. I can’t honestly wait to feel the power of those sub-woofers make my insides bleed and turn my eardrums to pulp again. Cooper’s live performance is mainly made up of layers and layers of guitar pushed and pushed through loads of effects and his laptop. It’s pretty cool.

Similes has pretty much been the soundtrack to my life over the past wee while, since getting my naughty copy from the interwebs… I will buy a proper copy as soon as I have a chance, promise. It’s the first thing out in quite a while that’s really affected me emotionally and I think that might be an important thing to mention while writing this. I was listening to the song ‘Cease To Know’ a few nights ago while driving back from Dundee crossing the Forth and it was seriously beautiful. I think that this album really does do so much, well it does for me, and I hope that it does for others too.

Eluvium – The Motion Makes Me Last

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Eluvium – Cease to Know

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Website | More mp3s | Buy from Amazon

I never really know what to do with pre-release mp3 teaser thingies on this site.  I don’t like just slapping them up on the blog without any thought, as a great many mp3 bloggers do.  It seems a bit of a waste of my time, and bit… well, a bit thoughtless I suppose.  As if suddenly the site would become a mindless news aggregator, which is not really fair, but it does feel a bit like that.

So I decided a little while back that I would use the podcasts for popping in new mp3s I had been emailed, but which didn’t have a home within a proper review of any sort.  That makes good sense, but then a lot of people don’t listen to the podcasts for varying reasons (no, not just because they’re shit), so it feels like there should be a way to pop the things up on the blog as well, for you other lot who heartlessly ignore all the hard work and effort that goes into the loving creation of a weekly podcast.

Anyhow, here are some things, most of which have been featured on every blog in Christendom already, and have also appeared on my own podcast already, but erm, I figured that non-podcasters deserved some fun too.

Sara Lowes may be best known for her work with the Earlies and Micah P. Hinson, but she is a fantastic solo artist in her own right, and this song is a teaser from a her new album Back to Creation, out, erm, soonish.  It has quite a lush pop sound, but for a change I am not going to complain about that.  Instead I am going to embrace it and say that I rather like it.  How’s that for an old dog learning a new trick then, eh?

Sara Lowes – Night Times

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My friend Phil and Little Matthew who helps with Toad Recordy things (as well as being a smart arse in the comments section) both love Eluvium, so I find myself really rather looking forward to their new record.  This teaser track sounds extremely promising, too.  The album is called Similies, is out on about the 15th Feb or so, and can be pre-ordered here.

Eluvium – The Motion Makes Me Last

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The new Eels album, frankly, ain’t really doing it for me just yet.  It’s a touch Eels-lite, but there are some good moments.  Little Bird is the official teaser for the album, End Times, which is out on Monday I think.

Eels – Little Bird

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Sam Amidon has also released an mp3 from a new album called I See the Sign.  It’s out in March sometime, and when I put it on the last podcast I remarked that it sounded a lot more like the Doveman stuff he does with his friend Thomas Bartlett, and speculated that perhaps Thomas had a lot to do with the new record.  Apparently this isn’t really how Bedroom Community (his label) work, so I may well be wrong, but I’m going to see him play in London in a week or two and I’ll ask him then.  Until then, this is How Come That Blood – nothing like the Sam stuff we know and love, but still brilliant if you ask me.  I’m really looking forward to this album.

Sam Amidon – How Come That Blood

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So, feedback time.  Do you have a preference for how to deal with this kind of newsy shite in future?  Should I have a way of just slapping up brand new mp3s sent by PR people to make sure you get your news on time, or does waiting for the review but sticking new stuff in the podcast make more sense to you?

It’s freezing outside and (just slightly) covered in snow (about half an inch) so naturally the entire nation has ceased to function.  Erm, okay, it really isn’t that cold and the snow really isn’t that big a deal in all honesty but of course given the worst weather conditions we usually have to deal with are constant and life-sapping drizzle it seems that it’s all come as a bit of a shock to the nation as a whole.

We live in a city by the sea of course, which means that we never get the sunshine which is promised and sadly, during the winter, we never get the snow or the cold either.  In the countryside it may occasionally be dangerous, but in the city it’s never much more than a stunningly picturesque inconvenience, and the bastard stuff will all have melted by next week anyway, so we might as well enjoy it while we still can.

This week the podcast is not themed at all, it’s just new and interesting stuff from my inbox.  I tend not to just slap up promo tracks emailed to me by PR chappies on the blog because, frankly, I really have nothing to say about them yet and I don’t really like firing out posts on the site when I don’t really have an opinion, right wrong or otherwise, to accompany it.  Podcasts, on the other hand, are a bit more spontaneous so they seem like a more suitable place to put new and interesting stuff before I have any real chance to figure out whether or not I actually like it properly.

Toadcast #103 – Baby, it’s Cold Outside

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01. Timber Timbre – Magic Arrow (Daytrotter Session) (01.47)
02. Drew Danburry – Many are Cold, but Few are Freezing (11.11)
03. Barton Carroll – The Poor Boy Can’t Dance (14.57)
04. Kid Canaveral – Good Morning (21.50)
05. The Middle East – The Darkest Side (28.19)
06. Eluvium – The Motion Makes Me Last (38.04)
07. Final Fantasy – Lewis Takes Action (43.12)
08. Rachael Dadd – Table (50.13)
09. Woodpigeon – Music Belongs to Those Who Make It (56.15)
10. Samamidon – How Come That Blood (62.32)