EULO CRAMPS by CALL SUPER

Eulo Cramps, Call Super’s fourth album sits at the epicentre of a multifaceted project titled ‘Tell Me I Didn’t Choose This’ that draws on poetry, auto-biographical writing, painting and music.

Melting improv, free jazz and the distinctive sound Call Super has perfected over the years with the helping hand of the invention of their ‘eharp’, Eulo Cramps is a channel where the producer-artist exorcised trauma and epiphanies around their own coming-of-age story. The album began as a way to understand themselves and their past; the intricacies of their personal suffering and their relationship with their body. Although it derives from the personal, while in the creative process, Seaton’s mind often wandered to the green foliage settings of sprawling forests. These memory trees evoke an earthy quality to the album as it glitters with the calmness of inner peace, much like dabbled light filtering through trees Seaton so often visited in their mind's eye.

One to usually remain in solitude whilst producing, on this new album Seaton breaks this rule and invites the distinctive voices of Julia Holter and Eden Samara to add their ethereal elemental resonance on tracks “Sapling” and “Illumina” - the latter already noted as a Pitchfork favourite. Using their voices as a portal into Seaton’s own personal sphere, they found respite in the falsetto of Holter and Samara. Whilst on “Goldwood” Elke Wardlaw, who is Seaton’s neighbour of 10 years in their hometown of Berlin, lends her dulcet tones with a poem that ebbs over Seaton’s trickling melodies.

Silence is an integral component of the creation of this album, and the spaciousness of “Ondo Helps Us Hear the Splinters” reflects this meditative nature. “Glossy Bingo Stain” focuses on the precarity of the body and appreciating one’s unevenness and “Years in the Hospital” recalls more painful memories of childhood and the boredom that comes from waiting to be seen and waiting for answers.

Even though Seaton’s illustrious DJ career sees them play globally, the traditional dancefloor rhythms are a rarity across Eulo Cramps, “Fly Black Stork” fits this form more so whereas on the rest of the album, Seaton pulls you into more adventurous and experimental territory with the percussions forming as a distinctive fluttering constant like on “Clam Lute Wig” and “Coppertone Elegy”. Not that this is in any way surprising, as with their previous albums the long-form releases tend to offer the space and clarity to go beyond the club walls. The saxophone, played by Seaton’s father, finds itself at home once again on this record too.