LAYERS: Peeking Inside Eluvium's "Envenom Mettle"

This week’s LAYERS brings us the lush and beautiful sounds of Portland, Oregon via ambient musician Eluvium. Eluvium, real name Matthew Cooper, has been a definitive figure in the Pacific Northwest’s instrumental music scene, releasing huge multi-facited orchestral compositions and touring across the country with the likes of Explosions In The Sky and Benoît Pioulard. He’s known to use electronic sample manipulation and experimental guitar work to create cinematic soundscapes that blend various minimal genres into stunningly reflexive and emotional ballads.

This May, Eluvium will release his sixth album, a sprawling double-disc release titled Nightmare Ending through Brooklyn label Temporary Residence. The album’s second single “Envenom Mettle” finds Cooper building a pulsing instrumental piece that grows with post-rock momentum and swirling piano melodies, taking the listener on a beautiful aural adventure.

Read below to find out how Eluvium achieved his signature genre-defying sound through layering classical instruments to orchestral enormity and enlisting the help of friend and Explosions In The Sky guitarist Mark Smith:

It was interesting to work on taking this song apart. For one, because it was actually 24 tracks total, which is definitely on the high end of number of tracks for me. Also, because the song was such a beast, it was fun to put it back together and see what happened. It sounds a little different than the final mix for the album, but for the sake of keeping things realistic while also not giving up the entire ghost, I found it best to consolidate things into 6 sections, instead of the 24 separate tracks.

Scatter Organs:

First we have the organs, which I have seemingly called the “scatter organs.” The theory here was to create something rejoicing and majestic for the song as a backbone, but as time went by, I pulled it a little further back into the mix and decided it would be a good idea to give them a bumbling and jumpy feel. I cut them up into pieces and layered them on top of each other in unique ways that created jumps in the chord progression and volume while also giving it a natural delay. They have an interesting effect by themselves. Pianos:

Second we have the pianos. It took me a while to figure out the tone of these as they needed a lot of punch, but I didn’t want them sitting too far upfront. In the end, I decided to pitch down a percentage of the overall outgoing sound and soak them in some reverbs. I think there are 4 or 5 layers here, though it doesn’t really sound like it. There’s at least one running late for a bit of slap back delay effect.

Reverse, Tape, Rhodes:

Here, titled “Reverse, Tape, Rhodes,” is basically just that. I think I played pianos and keyboards along with the entire song, and then mixed them together and they weren’t working very well. They seemed a little heavy handed, so I put them in reverse and added some reverbs and distortions. It created a nice constant to go along with the “scatter organs.” The other two things are a simple rhodes melody and a mashed up eaten tape sound mix of the rhodes with some other random artifacts in there.

Sounds like I used the sound of plugging in a quarter inch guitar cable here and there. Adding effects to a live cable plugging in or being unplugged from pedals or guitars can create some nice sounds. I think I did some of that on an older album of mine called ‘Talk Amongst The Trees’.

Percussion:

Here is the percussion. I honestly can’t remember the sound source for this but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is me just hitting the built in microphone on my laptop and then layering, EQ-ing , and possibly adding some manner of distortion.

I really enjoyed the static quality of them, just enough to give the song motion without it standing out too much. Though I can hear that I did some timing play on the first half and then left it straight forward on the second half, it’s pretty subtle.

Additional Sounds ft. Mark Smith:

For this song I also asked my friend Mark Smith if he wanted to add some things to it, he plays in a band called Explosions In The Sky. We’ve always gotten along well, and I’ve always enjoyed sharing things I’m working on with him, so I asked if he would be into doing this and he seemed pretty happy to try some various ideas.

He sent me a whole bunch of interesting stuff that totally blew me away. It was an outpouring of all sort of sounds. Some absolutely beautiful guitar lines along with other mixes he made from samples from various sources, and layers of noises that he had created. I took everything that he sent and layered it in all sorts of manners. Some of it stayed basically exactly as he sent it and other parts I chopped up and layered on top of each other, similar to what I did with the organs.

Additional Sounds ft. Mark Smith:

The guitar parts in particular are really lovely. I played around with multiple layers of them, doing different things so it almost sounds like classical style violins at times to me. But you probably hear something that started from something he sent at any given moment throughout the song. His parts really took the song in a whole new and exciting direction for me.

Ultimately I wanted the song to be sort of a rumbling mess of various emotions that sort of bursts, and he really helped me bring that concept to another level.

Put it all together and here’s what you get, “Envenom Mettle” by Eluvium:

@justinstaple Previously on LAYERS: Unpacking The Andrew Weathers Ensemble’s “Hard, Ain’t It Hard”