This is edited together from the highlights of a very creative session that Sophie Cooper and Delphine Dora had in the perfect setting of Todmorden Unitarian Church. This is their first collaboration, although Delphine put out Sophie’s stunning solo album “Our Aquarius” last year on her own excellent Wild Silence label. They also both appeared separately on Richard Moult’s album “Last Night I Dreamt of Hibrihteselle”. Put all these previous works out of you mind, though, as this is something very different. Different to most things.
Sophie and Delphine are caught here carrying out primal improvisations utilising the profound acoustics of this historic chapel. If you caught any of the unplugged sets at Tor Ist Das! Festival that just used the building’s acoustics then you will know what the building is capable of but with just two people in there, it sounds even more spacious, more infinite. Their tools are a trombone, percussion, electronics, organ and their wordless voices.
This is a limited edition of 50 copies on pink tapes, home dubbed. Mastered by Andie Brown. Cover art by Lucy Atherton
Side A
Les Différences S’unissent
Intuition
L’avenir Le Dira
Remote Position
The Former Residents
A Moment of Speaking
Interlude #1
Side B
The Cold Train
Saturation Melody
Interlude #2
Length of Space
Mary’s in the Doorway
Esprit Universel
WAS13 – out October 9th
“France’s Delphine Dora and England’s Sophie Cooper have both made impressively uncategorizable music over the past decade, and while they’ve been mutual supporters (Dora released Cooper’s excellent Our Aquarius on her Wild Silence label last year), this is the first time they’ve played together. Improvising in a echo-laden church in West Yorkshire, the pair found a sound distinct from their respective individual work. Their voices fill the space in a haunting-yet-reverent way; some of the tracks are like wordless hymns sung by ghosts. Distance Future’s surrounding ambience reminds me of the holy drones of Charlemagne Palestine and Janek Schaefer on Day of the Demons, but where that record’s power came in clarity, Dora and Cooper’s work is more mysterious—and ultimately something only these two could conjure” – Marc Masters, Pitchfork. Experimental albums of the year, 2015
“There’s something completely transporting about this album that makes it a winner, one of the standouts in label Was Ist Das?’s already formidable discography. Those vocals, wordless, enigmatic and beautiful, are definitely part of it, their ineffable shimmer seeming wholly alien and totally human at the same time. They cast a glistering web that seem to reveal the immutable laws of the universe, stars and planets revolving like brass models as those same incantations, almost shamanic in nature, bind them together in their eternal pirouettes.” – We Need No Swords
“Sounds emanate from stained glass shadows, reverberating through the church’s crevices to become both immediate and distant, a ghost simultaneously stuck in the past and present.” – The Big Takeover
