Maze of Woods
Inventions are the collaborative sum of longtime friends Matthew Cooper of Eluvium, and Mark T. Smith of Explosions In The Sky. Their 2014 eponymous debut album introduced an ambition to create music that was both challenging and comforting. Their new album, Maze of Woods, opens with a vocal sample declaring, "I wanted to do something that I don't know how to do." Using this as a mission statement, Inventions have crafted a complex and exuberant album from an array of instruments, samples, found sounds, beats, chants, and raw bursts of noise, with a much greater emphasis on strong vocal accompaniment in every song. Two albums released in the span of 11 months speaks to the drive that these two have felt since they started playing together. Much like on the first record, they again mixed the album in a house on the Oregon coastline, with final mixing and production all done by Smith and Cooper. Inventions have stated that much of the inspiration for Maze of Woods comes from the closing paragraph of Denis Johnson's novella Train Dreams. In that paragraph, Johnson describes the nonverbal howl of a feral wolf boy, a pre-language that is yearning and instinctual; a statement of wordless distress and love. Maze of Woods is the product of two masters of their craft getting lost in the wilderness, "doing something that they don't know how to do," and emerging with something wholly unexpected and beguilingly beautiful.
The second album from label-mates Mark T. Smith (guitarist for Explosions in the Sky) and Matthew Cooper (multi-instrumentalist laptop composer Eluvium) is a richer one than its precedessor, as their individual identities are subsumed to the project as a whole.
The ambient prog-rock duo return with an ambitious second album that stretches their experimental vision.
When ambient pop duo Inventions came together for the release of their self-titled 2014 debut, its strengths were no surprise based on the pedigree of the bandmembers.
Matthew Cooper of Eluvium and Mark T. Smith of Explosions in the Sky team up once again for their sophomore release as Inventions. On Maze o...