How has music transported you? Where do you find inspiration from the natural world? Where do you find moments of every day magic?
Erland Cooper is a Scottish composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist from Stromness, Orkney. He has released three acclaimed studio albums, four additional companion albums, and multiple EPs, including a trilogy of work inspired by his childhood home. His work combines field recordings with traditional orchestration and contemporary electronic elements. Through music words and cinematography, he explores landscape, memory, and identity. Cooper also works across mixed media projects, including installation, art, theater, and film. He is widely known for burying the only existing copy of the master tape of his first classical album in Scotland, deleting all digital files, and leaving only a treasure hunt of clues for fans and his record label alike to search for it. The tape has recently been found.

"Limitations are the greatest, greatest tools for advancing something. And that's where a narrative for me works very well. It acts like a kind of nautical map. I know where I'm going, and I know if I've gone way off course and I shouldn't be there because I look back at the limitations I've set for myself based on the stories within it.

One of our great British artists is Brian Eno, and he spoke a lot about limitations. I had the great joy of having a conversation. We ended up chatting for a couple of hours and he said, 'Oh, I want to show you something. I want to show you my library, and this tool I've created!' His Sonic Library, which is decades of audio material. (I have something similar. I call it an orphanage of sound. These files and folders that will eventually find a home.) But he's created a piece of software using algorithms that will at random pull out sounds and play them. And he can set certain parameters: I want a string sound to be here. And I'd like some bass sounds to come in. And I'd like some drum sounds, but it's just choosing these layers and playing them all at the same time. Again, a bit like the cacophony of birdsong. It's a bit of a mess initially, but then you can edit, and you start to refine. And in those limitations that have come out of this tool - and this is the point I guess I'm trying to make - is that it can be used as a tool to set limits or to burst limits. Or to mix things up. Out of that editing process, you can output something that to your ear sounds good to somebody else's ear."

www.erlandcooper.com

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