My introduction to Sophie Cooper came late, in 2013 in fact, via the last Woolf Music festival curated by Phil McMullen (Ptolemaic Terrascope / Terrastock)
where I saw Sophie performing solo alongside the likes of Josephine Foster, United Bible Studies and The Left Outsides.
On Alchemy she is joined by guitarist Ben Nash and Sophie, rightly so, declares it “one of my proudest musical moments”. The album was originally released a few years before her Woolf performance in 2009 via Sheffield’s Blackest Rainbow Records but is now available on digital release via Bandcamp for the first time.
Joe Blanchard, the head honcho of Blackest Rainbow Records, said at the time that it was “some of the best work to come from both Ben and Sophie so far”, I’d have to agree with him.
The release features two tracks which clock in 20 and 15 minutes allowing plenty of time to lose yourself in this layered drone psych-folk. Alchemy begins with a mesmerising meditative opening with sonorous drones, bowed strings and scrapes, fluttering percussion and subtle primitive flute-like sounds. Mid-way through this transforms through sustained dark synth notes before ending on drones that reminded me of a cross between Gregorian and Tibetan chants.
Natural Liberation Through Naked Vision is equally fascinating with the addition of prolonged trombone notes which again brought me back to some of the primitive drones found in Tibetan music. Like the opener there is a transformation mid-way through although this is far from darker shades of Alchemy. This time Cooper’s relaxed acoustic guitar play contrasts beautifully against Ben’s electric guitar, a definite highlight from this recording session which took place over a weekend on which Joe Blanchard describes as “Loren Connors mets Ry Cooder Paris Texas era sound”.
An exceptional album, don’t hesitate in buying.
Available via bandcamp https://sophiecooper.bandcamp.com/album/alchemy