Erland Cooper speaks about the inspirations fuelling his great Orkney trilogy

The titular track of Erland Cooper’s debut solo album, ‘Solan Goose’, begins with a squawking gannet and the rush of wind.

Gentle piano chords start playing and a soft, pulsating drum is heard. Slowly, the piano rises and strings come in. An ethereal choir harmonises in the background. Before long, you’re soaring.

The lone squawk of the gannet is now the majestic thrust of the song. “I enjoy working with quiet sound sources and amplifying them,” he says. “I want to explore sound where you don’t know where it’s created, but I do.” 

Quiet Beginnings

That notion of amplifying the quiet is one that has followed the Orcadian musician throughout his career. Cooper’s earliest outings with folk-rock group Erland & The Carnival took lost English and Scottish folk songs and reconfigured them in modern arrangements.

Traditional songs like ‘The Derby Ram’ and ‘Tramps and Hawkers’ become carnival-esque rock songs tinged with a psychedelic darkness. The group, formed with Simon Tong (The Verve, Gorillaz) and David Nock (The Orb), released three albums to critical acclaim.

He followed this with The Magnetic North, a trio alongside Tong and Hannah Peel who explored Cooper’s and Tong’s birthplaces – the Orkneys and Skelmersdale, in west Lancashire, respectively – across two albums.

Moving into an amorphous genre somewhere between post-rock and shoegaze, the albums dug up the mythology of their set location and explored their landscapes and people.

On their debut, Orkney: Symphony of the Magnetic North, local Orcadian legends and landmarks like Betty Corrigall and The Old Man of Hoy sea stack come front and centre, providing fertile ground for inspiration. 

Homeward Bound

“If you’re feeling uninspired, go home,” Cooper says, and sure enough, home has provided the groundwork for all of his solo work since. The Orkney Triptych is comprised of 2018’s Solan Goose, 2019’s Sule Skerry, and the forthcoming Hether Blether, and each are odes to different aspects of the Orkneys.

Solan Goose is the aviary, studying the birdlife in beautifully crafted detail. Sule Skerry is the seascape, imbued with the stormy bluster and gentle ripples of the waves, and the forthcoming Hether Blether is the land.

Named after a hidden island in folklore, it delves deeper into the culture of the Orcadian people. On all three, song titles are written in traditional dialect.

These albums see Cooper treading the ground of Nils Frahm and Brian Eno. The music is ambient and soothing, recollecting the serenity of the Orkney islands.

“It’s about transporting yourself without going anywhere,” Cooper says in his soft Orcadian accent.

Local Lore

Much like Eno’s Music for Airports, Cooper’s solo work feels like an attempt to ease the angst of city life, using the lore of his birthplace as an anchor in the rushing tide of modern life.

Listening to his latest, Hether Blether, the stories of the locals and the warmth of the instrumentation transport you to the islands of his childhood.

What better way to escape the stress of the present than to get lost in the history of another.

After forays in psychedelic folk and rock, does Cooper now see himself as a classical composer?

“I don’t label myself as anything other than a musician,” he insists, “though as a soloist, I feel like a kid discovering the joy of playing a piano note for the first time and hearing the sound that it makes. I’m learning something new every day, and I love it.”

Given the joy evident in his music, long may it continue.   

This article originally appeared in the June 2020 issue of Songlines magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today