Core Memory is not just a musical collective in the usual sense of the word. It's a multimedia project! And things only get more interesting from here. Its members are two brothers – McKinley and Harrison Foster. McKinley lives in New York and writes all the music, combining electronic textures, unusual-sounding guitars and warm lo-fi sheen. Harrison lives in LA and provides adaptive visuals for the music. Brothers have just released "Array", an album exploring the themes of nostalgia and childhood with the help of acoustic instruments. The artwork is the drawing of the brothers' childhood home.

The album opener "Firefly Beat" instantly brings to mind Four Tet's first, less dance-driven albums, as well as Caribou's earlier, more psychedelic work. The track's textures are recognizable – guitars still sound like guitars, but these guitars have been through a lot. Maybe they were chewed up and spit out by monsters, maybe they have been through long and exhausting time and space travels. Or maybe it's just pure magic. The peculiarity of the guitar sound is counterbalanced by warm strings that give the track's sonic objects extra lightness – it's like every instrument is levitating in the warm colorless air from the record's artwork.

"Sleepy Hollow" starts like a dreamy indie rock song, later turning into a cinematic piece, paradoxically intimate and grandiose at the same time. Basically the elements here are the same as on "Firefly Beat", but the chemistry is entirely different. The song breathes like a living object, expanding and then getting smaller again, returning into its ultimately intimate state only at the very last second.

"Annularity" is built around an extremely catchy acoustic guitar riff, making it probably the most commercially promising moment on the album. Much like the previous composition, it slowly grows into perfect cinema (or even advertisement) music, without losing any of its deepness and sophistication. The song is composed of many layers, each of which keeps breathing and shape-shifting throughout the track. The song does not just seem built for movies, it's like a movie in itself, with unexpected plot twists and moments of quiet beauty following nerve-racking cliffhangers. Its 4 minutes always end too soon, even after repeated listens.

"thereisnowhereyoudontbelong" has a curious title that can be used for meditation aimed at grasping the universe's true nature with one soft touch. The music on this one is like that too. The gentle synth pads make you feel like you are walking on clouds, and reverberated guitars embrace you like waves of outer warmth and inner calmness.

The EP closes with "Opaque". After a moment of clarity and resolution on the previous song, "Opaque" puts everything back into the state of controlled chaos, leaving questions open and string unattached. It's the track that captures the mood of the artwork better than the rest of the album. You see contours of things you know and love, expressed by thin synth lines and small-sounding guitar arpeggios. The rest is blank space. You can fill it with colors or you can embrace its emptiness. Both are fine.

Overall, "Array" is a perfect album for fans of folktronica, seeking something made with more heart and attention to detail than music found on most algorithmic playlists today. The tracks here exist on a fine line between comforting simplicity and brain-exploding complexity, gently guiding you through moments of both and always leaving you longing for more of the album's intoxicating quiet beauty.

Also check out some of the project's earlier material.