Every now and again, I gamble reasonable sums of money on albums that I've not heard; this is one such album. Sometimes those gambles pay off, other times not so much. I always thought this album leant towards the latter, although listening to Flood Poems now I'm wondering if I haven't given it enough chances over the years.
In November 2014 I was in Cardiff and it's almost rude to go to Cardiff and not visit Spillers Records, so I did. It was the first time I'd been there since they moved location and was slightly sad to see that the quantity of stock was much lower than it used to be. Luckily, the quality was even better, so at least they downsized in a good way. The vinyl is/was hidden upstairs on a landing, but in the few boxes were many records I fancied buying. They had the newest Electric Wizard album, Time to Die, a very reasonably-priced copy of Shellac's Excellent Italian Greyhound which I'd been after for a little while and the double-cd best of The Ex; the latter resulted in a nice conversation with the staff about the fact they'd sold three The Ex albums in the last few days and how nice it is to meet other people who like that band. They were also very positive about this Inventions record.
Roll back a few minutes and I was making some very tough choices about what records to take downstairs to the counter. I made a fairly long short-list going through the racks and left behind some albums that I'm sure would have been very welcome in my collection (including Run the Jewels 2, an album I already loved but hadn't yet bought a copy of, something I later rectified). A curious addition was this record. I was on a huge Explosions in the Sky trip at the time (and still am, to be fair), so a collaboration between one of the guys in Explosions and Eluvium (who I didn't really know at the time - I've since become a fan after hearing Shuffle Drones (in endless different ways)) sounded quite interesting. Spillers have always been great at writing little reviews on the sleeve and this was very positive. £20 was a lot to gamble on an unknown, but the review was very convincing and I choose this record to add to my pile of records, at the expense of at least one other.
Now having listened to a bit of Matthew Cooper's music as Eluvium, this album sounds exactly like what you'd imagine a collaboration between Explosions and Eluvium would do. It has more in common with The Wilderness and their soundtracks than it does the earlier EITS albums, but that experimental edge is very welcome. Compared to Eluvium, there are these very EITS-esque guitars just floating somewhere in the background, occasionally coming forward, that really make it work (not to say Eluvium is difficult, but it's certainly not music you could put on in a crowded room). Peaceable Child is a perfect example to what they do and well worth a listen.
I'm enjoying Inventions far more right now than I ever remember doing so before; I possibly wrote them off unfairly. In my defence, Hugh gave me a copy of Nils Frahm's excellent Spaces that weekend, so as far as neo-classical/ambient post-rock music goes, it was up against a truly stunning album. On top of that, Time to Die ended up being number 3 in my top ten that year, and Excellent Italian Greyhound has The End of Radio on it, so competition for my ears was tough around that time. However, the point of this blog was always to rediscover and re-appreciate hidden gems in my collection, so this last 45 minutes has been very productive - I'll be playing this one much more often.
Format: 12"
Tracks: 8
Cost: £20 new
Bought: Spillers Records, Cardiff
When: 15/11/14
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: Download code
