Name: Erland Cooper
Occupation: Composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist
Nationality: Scottish
Current release: Erland Cooper's Folded Landscapes is out via Mercury KX.

If you enjoyed this Erland Cooper interview and would like to find out more about his music, visit his official homepage. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.  



Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

Impulses are just that, they arrive at any time, often without prompt. Inspiration from art, people, place, all play their part to enrich that. It is easy to join the dots backwards to see how something came into being but hard to commit fully to a creative process without some form of influence.

I’ve said it prior but writing seems a little like bird spotting, you never quite know what you are going to spot on any given day - but if you go a little deeper into a landscape and are patient, you are more likely to find something interesting, sat along with what you might expect.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work? What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

I often think good ideas tend to be a culmination of multiple ok ideas.

It seems to me when several thoughts line up together, we can draw parallels between them or not, creating a sort of linear flow of inspiration or process. I long for those moments but for the most, it is a process of creating lots of ideas, then self-editing to combine and find common ground between them, often with the additional collaborator of time.

I always provide a door of chance in my work, usually with other musicians or engineers towards the end of a project. It permits me to look in from a different window and know when to finish. Invariably, these moments are always my favourite bits, forming the most lasting memories.

When Simon Armitage provided a trilogy of poems at the 11th hour on Folded Landscapes and soprano Josephine Stephenson sang these texts back to us, it felt like a sort of spontaneous happening. Our cantus firmus landed like a gannet fishing without much to any thought.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

Movement 7 acts like an epilogue to the 6 movements prior but this was an idea created years before that I had simply entitled Folded Landscapes in draft.

When I found it later, quite by accident searching for something else, it acted as reminder of the source of ideas, where they come from and how they end up, reshaped into new things, like sculpting. Keeping this on the album is a reminder of process and how to prepare for others.

I like to plan and prepare then set about things very quickly. A well transcribed score with interesting orchestral articulations makes for a good conversation in a recording session. Like narrative or a diagram, it is yet another map.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

I work most days, early in the morning before others wake and correspondence with the outside world begins. I’m quite militant on that but probably no more so than any classical musician is with practice on their chosen instrument or an engineer in their field or an operations director of a company.

I am autodidact and feel I owe it to myself to work hard in-between the cracks of everything else. I didn’t have the opportunity to study classical music growing up on an Island in the North Sea. We are all habitual in our routines and I’ve learnt to enjoy, respect, and change them where necessary.

What do you start with? How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

I rarely look at a blank page. I have a library of unrelated ideas of vastly different quality, an orphanage of sound files that have yet to find a home. I always go through that first to see if something fits a story or feel or just interests me. I then expand upon it.

There is rarely just one line of text or first notes, rather lots to choose from, perhaps too many. It is getting rid of things first and foremost that creates a good way to start for me. Single minded focus is an attractive virtue until it becomes a little dimmed by its own sunglasses.

Once you've started, how does the work gradually emerge?

Speaking to director Sally Potter, she told me that over her career she discards to the cutting room floor, around 90% of what she shoots, leaving the balance as her final film. I consider that often. My cutting room floor is a sort of archive to dip in and out of and my ratio is getting closer to that, but it is still way off.

The finished work so rarely resembles the start, so it is good to respect that process for what it is, just a process. Thankfully like most creativity, only I get to see this patchwork horror show.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

A narrative to me, acts as a sort of nautical map. It can help tell you what to do, use, record, write and when you’ve gone in the wrong direction. It can create limitations and open out new territories.

Without this, I find I’m not yet close to starting something long-form. But it is when smaller ideas converge into something else - that is where the catalyst to make a map and see a finish line tends to come from for me.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally? Is there an element of spirituality to what you do?

I recorded a multimovement work in 2020, put it onto magnetic ¼ inch tape, deleted all the digital files then buried the tape in the soil for 3 years.

This was a way to deepen my understanding of patience and collaborate with a timeline, as well as the earth itself. To compose, decompose and recompose with the unearthed material being released and performed, exactly as it sounds from the soil, along with all its new artefacts of sound.

In a world of instant gratification, it acts as a sort of meditation, asking, which part of the process do I find joy in and how to value more on a deeper level. The music exists only in the memory of the players that performed it and that is especially precious to me now.

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process? How do you finish a work?

A work seems finished when there only exists one final master to share. Once it is shared, it no longer becomes the creators to edit. It lands on the shoulders, the ears of others at anytime and anywhere to be reformed and reworked in anyway it wants, coinciding with new memories and moments unrelated to the creator yet somehow newly linked.

I often think a defining moment in audio for the next 100 years could be withholding finished material in its final digital state to the public domain for a little community moment. This could become a sort of precious ritual, to listen offline just before AI does and uses it as further source material in the great world of digital soup.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally? How involved do you get in this?

This is a lifeblood of the creative industry. Every part of these has a high value, potential and importance. Each can be the difference between liking and disliking something and an opportunity to collaborate with others in the most life enriching way.

I often work with Marta Salogni or Guy Davie and in these close to finished processes, I always learn something new. Often perhaps how to let go of what has been made and even start to slowly define what has been created a little better.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness. Can you relate to this – and how do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

I’m not sure about that, perhaps it is rather a combination of hopeful melancholia or the bottom of a wave of directional energy.

Someone asked me recently, how do I write an album, a quartet piece or just a new piece of music. I replied, I’m not sure but perhaps don’t try to write one, rather try to write three. Invariably, one will be good, the others will be ok or perhaps bad but they will live on to inform the main work and eventually evolve into something else.

Writing is a cacophony of ideas combined with single minded focus, both of which have great value. I enjoy doing variations on a theme where the original idea has moved into something new. A creative adventure can live on for a moment longer in a new form, a bit like recycling.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you personally feel as though writing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

Creativity seems to inform a balance of ideas and opportunity. Having several tasks that all need completing is a good thing. When doing one thing, we always crave to do another.

I’m sure the most profound ideas come from doing something completely unrelated. These experiences or tasks inform and feed each other, and music can really be heard in anything that moves the air around it.

Sometimes it’s hard to listen but there is a magic in the everyday and noticing the smaller details.