Alder & Ash

Cellist Adrian Copeland follows up his equally harrowing album, Psalms For The Sunder with a new small press for Lost Tribe Sound. Clutched In The Maw continues his bleak, Cormac McCarthy world-building through classical composition. Though rooted in the cello like his previous venture, this album delves into processed sound on a much deeper level. However, while the processing adds to his landscape of decay and solemn isolation, it’s Copeland’s playing that’s at the core of the album’s stunning set.

He runs the full range of the instrument in a way that only those who are deeply classically trained can muster, but with the freedom of one who is not beholden to any notion of acceptable norms within the classical or neo-classical context. Copeland’s compositions scrape and gnaw, gasp and moan through the body of an instrument that shouldn’t seem like it has this much anguish inside of it. Each crushing drop of bile, blood and tears comes seeping through the speakers. There are those that choose to use their gifts to lift the listener up to see the sun through the fog. Copleand chooses to send us deeper into a hopelessness that’s flirting with the essence of Doom.

He digs us out of the hole by the end, though, proving he’s not as scarred by the darkness as the first half would lead a listener to believe. There’s an elegance and relief to “The Merciful Dawn” (as one might expect) and by the closer “The Glisten, The Glow” we’re back in some sort of daybreak, albeit one that’s streaked with greys. The album is a visceral run at anguish and acceptance, and ultimately a joy to behold.




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