Electro/Ambient

Artist: Halls Label: No Pain in Pop

INVENTIONS is the new band formed by longtime friends, tourmates, and labelmates Matthew Cooper of ELUVIUM, and Mark T. Smith of EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY. There are plenty of talking points here: The fact that Cooper hasn't been in a "band" of any sort since he was a teenager; no member of EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY has released an album outside of the context of EITS since their inception in the late 90s; and, of course, this is a dream duo for anyone familiar with the unparalleled emotional resonance of Cooper and Smith's respective day jobs. However, thirty seconds into their eponymous debut album, you realize that the esteemed pedigree is irrelevant. INVENTIONS exceeds all expectations by discarding them from the get-go. They have created their own tiny, wondrous corner of the world, one with ever-changing sounds and colors. INVENTIONS began in earnest last year when Cooper invited Smith to collaborate on a song for ELUVIUM's otherworldly double-album, "Nightmare Ending". The track, "Envenom Mettle", was a standout on an album full of them, and just like that a longstanding friendship blossomed into a full-fledged creative partnership. The following six months the duo continued to send audio files back and forth to each other from their respective homes in Portland, Oregon and Austin, Texas. The collaboration proved fruitful, inspiring, and truly enjoyable from the outset, and in less than a year they had amassed more than an album's worth of material. They traveled together to a secluded beach house on the Oregon coast to complete the album, an environment that proved not only highly productive but also clearly influential on the album's windswept beauty and warm vibrations. Across eight songs the duo explore the delicate and disturbing - and virtually everything in-between - with majestic abandon. It's the kind of beauty and brilliance that only masters of their craft can accomplish when all egos and expectations are cast aside in pursuit of the splendor of sound Style: Ambient

Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening-- the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet. ..." Hydras Dream is a special collaboration between the Swedish musicians ANNA VON HAUSSWOLFF and MATTI BYE (winner of the Guldbaggen 2014 price for scoring the film drama ""Faro"" and composer of the film score for ""The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared""). The concept behind this project is to interpret stories, movies and myths into musical landscapes. For their debut album ""The Little Match Girl"", von Hausswolff and Bye construed the beautiful and melancholic story by H.C. Andersen of the same title. Asked about the reason for this particular choice, the two musicians state: ""It was her tragic faith in the winter's cold that inspired us. She is freezing to death with no money and no comfort, she is all alone, dreaming of a warmer place. When death strikes her she is filled with magical illusions and dreams. Oddly enough, hypothermia and death are the only two comfort zones we experience in this story. Sad but beautiful."" "". The lights [.] rose higher and higher, she saw them now as stars in heaven; one fell down and formed a long trail of fire. ""Someone is just dead!"" said the little girl; for her old grandmother, the only person who had loved her, and who was now no more, had told her, that when a star falls, a soul ascends to God. She drew another match against the wall: it was again light, and in the lustre there stood the old grandmother, so bright and radiant, so mild, and with such an expression of love. ..."" The music of Hydras Dream is mostly made through improvisation and by using repetitious patterns and melodies. Indeed, the two musicians state ""We want to use intuition and spontaneity as two key elements in the compositions, and therefore we don't pre-record anything. We just play whatever feels good and fits the theme and press rec."" Thus it is no surprise that ""The Little Match Girl"" was written and recorded during only three days in Matti Bye's studio. Exploring the entire spectrum of their instruments, von Hausswolff and Bye ingeniously combined their virtuosity in order to craft an eclectic and delicate album, located somewhere inbetween neo-classical experimentalism and avantgarde dream-pop. One can virtually image how the notes of this debut faintly resound behind the candle-lit windows which separate the little match girl from the life-saving warmth, how their echoes join her in her inevitable fate ... "". But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall -- frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. [.] ""She wanted to warm herself,"" people said. No one had the slightest suspicion of what beautiful things she had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor in which, with her grandmother she had entered on the joys of a new year Style: Experimental

Artist: Lace Curtain Label: Mexican Summer

Artist: Inventions Label: Temporary (Cargo Records)

Artist: Lilacs; Artist: Champagne Label: Mexican Summer

Artist: Two Wings Label: Tin Angel (Indigo)

I Shall Die Here" is the fourth full-length album by THE BODY. Sharing their moribund vision for "I Shall Die Here" with Bobby Krlic (aka THE HAXAN CLOAK), the tried and true sound of THE BODY is cut to pieces, mutilated by process and re-animated in a spectral state by the newly minted partnership. THE BODY's brutal musical approach, engraved by drummer Lee Buford's colossal beats and Chip King's mad howl and bass-bladed guitar dirge, becomes something even more terrifying with Krlic's post-mortem ambiences serving as both baseline and outer limit. "I Shall Die Here" sonically serrates the remains of metal's already unidentifiable corpse and splays it amid tormented voices in shadow. Record Label: Rvng Intl. Style: Experimental

Artist: Paul Kalkbrenner Label: Paul Kalkbrenner Musik (rough trade)

Artist: Chris Imler Label: Staatsakt (rough trade)

Artist: Klaus Shulze Label: USA

Record Label: Warp Style: Electronic

Artist: Agnosys Label: Code 7 - Great Dane Records

Artist: Chad VanGaalen Label: Sub Pop

Artist: Thievery Corporation Label: Eighteenth Street

Composer: A. G. Trio Label: Daily Records (Soulfood)

Artist: Todd Terje Label: Olsen Records

Artist: Eric Thielemans Label: Miasmah

Artist: Todd Terje Label: Olsen Records

Artist: Hundreds Label: Sinnbus (rough trade)