Inventions are the collaborative sum of friends Matthew Cooper of Eluvium, and Mark T. Smith of Explosions in the Sky. Their 2014 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 greater emphasis on strong vocal accompaniment in every song.
