Artist : Hydras Dream
Album : The Little Match Girl
Year : 2014
Genre : Ambient
Quality : 236kbps / 44.1KHz / Joint Stereo
Source : CD
Playtime : 0h 40m
Size : 71.25mb
Label : Denovali Records
Catalognr : den196
Tracklist:
01. Last Evening Of The Year 3:11
02. The Little Match Girl 6:45
03. Hypothermia 4:03
04. Losing The Slippers 4:29
05. Grievance Of A Young Girl 5:00
06. Grandma's Appearance 5:33
07. Fall Of A Star 2:23
08. Joys Of A New Year 2:55
09. The End 5:51
Releasenotes:
"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."
http://denovali.com/hydrasdream/