(Electronic, Dream Pop, Alternative, Experimental) Hydras Dream (Anna von Hausswolff) - The Little Match Girl - 2014, MP3, 320 kbps

Hydras Dream is a special collaboration between the Swedish musicians ANNA VON HAUSSWOLFF and MATTI BYE who between them and scored (and even won awards for) a numbner of film soundtracks. So, this is another ‘soundtrack to a film that doesn’t exist’?. Well yes, if you must, but it also stands up splendidly on it’s own two frail and fragile feet.
The work is inspired by a story “The Little Match Girl” by H.C. Andersen, a story with central themes of the cold of winter, dreams of warmer places and, ultimately, death. The duo faultlessly capture these themes with their soundscapes, which are partly organic with washes of reverberated piano and strings, and partly synthetic with loops of synthesizer motifs and electronic sounds. Sometimes warm and inviting, and at other times rather cold and oppressive, each track leads you further through the story. Female vocals grasp at you, as if drifting from an old radio just out of sight in thick fog, to compliment the compositions which sometimes border on fragile and very dreamy pop.The overall result is quite breathtaking and magical.
“The Little Match Girl” would sit perfectly with some Lynchian film moments and should readily appeal to fans of such bands as In The Nursery, Black Tape for Blue Girl and even elements of Legenday Pink Dots. This is an album I will be returning to and I’m eager to learn of the theme they choose for their next release.