- Critic score
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- By date
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May 10, 2013Cooper's ability to infuse a very human emotional arc into his wordless sheets of sound is a large part of what's made his body of work so captivating. Electronic webs meet with patient piano moments throughout Nightmare Ending, sometimes casting heavy shadows of fear or pain, other times offering relief from that very pain.
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Alternative PressMay 10, 2013With vocals creeping into the closer "Happiness," not once does Cooper put a foot wrong, creating an album that borders on perfection. [Jun 2013, p.96]
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May 14, 2013Nightmare Ending might be too big to work as a first-time introduction to Cooper’s music (either Talk Amongst the Trees or Lambent Material would do better), but it’s a loving summit for anyone who has been trailing him through the years.
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May 30, 2013Perhaps Nightmare Ending would have been a more interesting record if Cooper had let himself off the leash rather more and explored ‘flawed’ ideas and sounds more purposefully.
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Sep 4, 2013It’s restlessly beautiful stuff.
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MagnetMay 10, 2013There's no shortage of pretty sounds, but it's too easy to drift into the reliable ebb and flow of this album's amniotic dynamic. [No. 98, p.54]
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MojoJun 18, 2013Kite breezes of melodic distortion blur into fog banks of silver noise before everything goes Dream-psych with Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan on hazy closer Happiness. [Jul 2013, p.87]
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Jun 3, 2013No matter how many times you listen to Nightmare Ending, you will probably never figure out why it was given its title: sad or happy, deaths and endings are not treated on the album as nightmarish, but as natural to humanity as is emotion.
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May 30, 2013It's a long glorious exhalation of energies not actually dissipated, as it seemed for a while, but only multiplying in force under suppression.
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May 22, 2013The result actually makes for one of the best introductions to all the sides of Cooper’s work, even as it’s a wonderful banquet for fans.
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May 28, 2013Nightmare Ending may not be Cooper's most cohesive record, but it's a perfect representation of the indie-rock generation's most diverse ambient musician.
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May 10, 2013It’s a much more jagged experience; a patchwork as opposed to an exercise in consistency. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, Nightmare Ending manages to be Eluvium’s most evocative and interesting work to date.
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Under The RadarJun 13, 2013Matthew Cooper's music veers from Ambient to experimental on his latest spellbinding release. [Jun-Jul 2013, p.97]