Release Date: Apr 1, 2014
Genre(s): Electronic, Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock, Indie Rock, Indie Electronic, Post-Rock, Experimental Ambient
Record label: Temporary Residence
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Whether it's endless Texan skies or icy ravines, post-rock always has those hues of white and blue. Ambient and drone music, meanwhile, has the red and greens of sun-blotched vision. Combine the two colour palettes and you have something that could get messy, damn fast. Thankfully, Mark T. Smith ….
Some collaborations feel inevitable. Matthew Cooper, the producer behind the multifaceted ambient project Eluvium, shares a label and a sensibility with post-rock juggernaut Explosions in the Sky—both craft towering edifices of sound that aren’t afraid to go for the emotional jugular. Inventions, a new project by Cooper and EITS guitarist Mark T.
I am sure I am not the only person whose interest was piqued when it became known some time ago that electronic impresario Eluvium, aka Mathew Cooper, and the boys from Explosions in the Sky were teaming up to make some music together. While I enjoy both Eluvium’s and Explosion in the Sky’s music, both outfits tend to leave me feeling somewhat unfulfilled. This is primarily just an issue of personal preference, but I suspect that other people share some of my misgivings.
On their own, Eluvium mastermind Matthew Cooper and Explosions in the Sky guitarist Mark T. Smith have explored similar sonic territories in very different ways. Where Eluvium explore the subtlety of gentle soundscapes and textural ambience, EITS favor grandeur, with overwhelming crescendos of emotion breaking through the loneliness of their songs' wide-open spaces.
I like to eat peanuts. My fiancée says I eat too many of them. “Too much of a good thing is never healthy for you,” she often reminds me as I’m picking through bag after bag. So, I try to stop. But they’re so goddamn good, I always think, and eventually I get sick after plowing through ….
Sleep’s Jerusalem, Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygene and, to a lesser extent, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon and Ozric Tentacles’ Jurassic Shift. These are all albums whose tracks remain emotionally welded together, no matter how many attempts are made to pull them asunder. Those who harbour a strong passion for long-players of this ilk will glory in the birth of Inventions whose debut demands instantaneous full exposure.
Teen, a four-woman band from Brooklyn, has de-fuzzed itself after its drone-loving, low-fi, psychedelia-infused 2012 debut album, “In Limbo.” Clarity is a must on Teen’s second album, “The Way and Color” (Carpark), because the band’s new songs bloom with vocal harmonies and double down on intricate counterpoint. With productions that rely on analog-sounding synthesizers and drums both live and programmed, Teen can hint at Stereolab, Erykah Badu or Dirty Projectors. Yet the songs also tend to metamorphose as they go, starting out perky and pointillistic and ending up, perhaps, in a brass-section chorale or a brawny rock guitar riff.
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