By: Daniela Patrizi
Inventions | facebook | twitter |
Released on October 16, 2015 via Temporary Residence
Thankfully, after the release of the s/t debut album and Maze of Woods, Eluvium’s Matthew Cooper and Explosions In The Sky’s Mark T. Smith are back with the Blanket Waves EP to celebrate again the perfect marriage between Smith’s emotional guitars and Cooper’s introspective soundscapes.
Blanket Waves follows the same path of Maze of Woods characterized by a brilliant mix of ambient and post-rock scattered by vocal samples and indeterminate instrumentation that make the whole composition mysterious and intriguing. I listened the new EP several times and I have to conclude that Inventions confirm again the attitude the duo have to keep on pushing the envelope to create something new in the genre and compositions like Blanket Waves are more than welcomed especially when they are so brilliantly executed.
Blanket Waves is composed of two tracks that offer in total 24 minutes of gorgeous musical landscapes with ambient moments that can be both ethereal and dark and they have the power to lift you up. The sound is so intense that you really have the impression of shaping it and, while the album plays, you can see it moving through various forms.
The opening ‘Blanket Waves’ has a unique sound that lies in the space between ambient, drone and post rock. Guitars, the primary mode of communication for Inventions, here made a great job and lead the listeners in a journey through a multitude of nuances that sometimes appear desolate but they are always warm till landing onto the beautiful crescendo towards the end of the 14-minute track. Anyone who has liked Inventions in the past will love it.
‘Hearing Loss’, the second part of the EP, departs from that crescendo but here the two friends and composers add voices, field recordings and other elements that make this track a real masterpiece. ‘Hearing Loss’ is dreamy and hazy, the rhythm is pursuing, the atmosphere is haunting and these entire elements create mystical soundscapes while the instruments actually emulate the sound of stars.
The two tracks of Blanket Waves EP flow one into the other one, in circle, as if they were one unique piece of music but, at the same time, it seems that each song evolves into the following one. Sometimes it’s like being in two places at once and it’s gorgeous.
