Roll the Dice's 'Assembly': A Doom Orchestra at the Frozen Edge of Civilization

Roll the Dice is the Swedish duo of composers/producers Peder Mannerfelt and Malcolm Pardon making some of the most expansive, sprawling music one might ever consider "electronic," or, for that matter, ambient and minimal. It's desolate, beautiful work that spreads outward, like a pristine but high-contrast Arctic plain. The effect is strange, a sort of austure modern classicism teasing at the propulsive dark techno of dudes like Vatican Shadow but with an deeper, more finely calculated musical agenda. A 26 piece string section helps, of course.

The songs of the duo's just-out Until Silence climb mountains and twist through caves; there is a destination here, which means there's a journey. It's a sound that demands not just attention, but focus: every piece matters. That's rare.

The video below, the work of Frode and Marcus, is about as literal as anything could be without showing the viewer actual notes. It's a tour of sorts of some Arctic landscape populated with the living ruins of an industrial human settlement. As glaciers calve into black water and chiseled mountains loom, it's still the settlement that winds up the coldest, starkest element, and a diving polar bear the warmest.