Guys, arguably the very best album of the year came out digitally (emusic and itunes I think) yesterday and will be out on vinyl very soon. It's Matthew Robert Cooper's "Miniatures." That name might not sound familiar to any of you. That's because he usually releases music under his moniker, Eluvium. That name might not sound familiar to you. If so, you probably don't like ingenious, beautiful, mesmerizing ambient brilliance. This new album consists of 9 relatively short tracks (it's only 33 minutes long) but each one is fantastic. Solo piano, sonorous organs, layers of fuzzy bliss, this release is an ambient fans dream come true. For real. Fans of Eluvium will definitely hear influences from the most recent Eluvium release, Copia, and from his earlier solo piano album but this really is something wholly new. He wrote these songs under his actual name because he saw this as something similar to, but separate from, what an Eluvium album should be. And it shows. This is something new and haunting and wonderful. Everyone should listen to this. It's nothing short of spectacular and it's probably my number one album thus far of 2008.