Composer Erland Cooper did something unexpected with the recordings that would become his new album Carve the Runes Then Be Content With Silence: he buried them. For several years, in fact, until they were discovered by someone who’d followed the clues Cooper had left to the master tapes’ location. The result is a gorgous, melancholic array of music, interspersed with poetry and given a more textured quality from their time underground. I spoke with Cooper about this unusual process and the role of collaboration in his work.
