Next up on FACT’s 2012 Advent Calendar: A stripped-down version of Julia Holter’s ‘Marienbad’, our number two track of the year.

L.A.’s Julia Holter opens her sophomore effort Ekstasis with the impressive, boundlessly ambitious ‘Marienbad’. Rather than the byzantine opus on record, this version of the song remains in the chamber-pop mode throughout. Cellist Heather McIntosh is the perfect counterpoint to Holter’s reverb-bathed vocals, and this version is particularly moving. The song appears on the forthcoming Ekstasis (Expanded).