hydras dream - the little match girl

"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."