Hidden Shoal News
New Slow Dancing Society Single & Album Pre-Orders
Hidden Shoal is excited to present ‘The Color of Despair‘, the new single from American ambient artist Slow Dancing Society. The song is lifted from the forthcoming album The Wagers Of Love And Their Songs From The Witching Hour, due for release on the 23rd of August 2016.
On his seventh full-length release as Slow Dancing Society, Drew Sullivan’s sound continues to evolve. This 19-track epic meshes the warm, rich SDS sound with a new set of textures, bringing these musical snapshots into vivid definition. Trumpet and saxophone nestle amidst lyrical guitar lines, pulsing rhythms and expansive synths, creating an immersive and melancholy listen, tempered with rays of hope.
Sullivan’s work is as cinematic as ever, yet here he’s scoring a more personal film. Profoundly influenced by Sullivan’s experience of becoming a father for the first time, the album took shape around the creation of single ‘The Color of Despair’. The track distilled his anxieties about his new life and responsibilities, and became ground zero for the album’s sound and production, with many other songs on the album evolving out of its instrumentation and feel. The ambient lyricism present here is a testament to the narrative possibilities of instrumental music, resulting in a strikingly complete-sounding album.
‘The Color of Despair’ is available now as a stream and free download. The Wagers Of Love And Their Songs From The Witching Hour is available for pre-order via iTunes and BandCamp before it’s release on 23rd August 2016.
New Slow Dancing Society Album Out 23/8/16
Hidden Shoal is excited to announce the forthcoming release of The Wagers Of Love And Their Songs From The Witching Hour, the new album by American ambient artist Slow Dancing Society. The album will see release on 23/8/16 preceded by the first single ‘The Color of Despair’ on 26/7/16. Check out the album teaser over at our YouTube channel.
On his seventh full-length release as Slow Dancing Society, Drew Sullivan’s sound continues to evolve. This 19-track epic meshes the warm, rich SDS sound with a new set of textures, bringing these musical snapshots into vivid definition. Trumpet and saxophone nestle amidst lyrical guitar lines, pulsing rhythms and expansive synths, creating an immersive and melancholy listen, tempered with rays of hope.
Sullivan’s work is as cinematic as ever, yet here he’s scoring a more personal film. Profoundly influenced by Sullivan’s experience of becoming a father for the first time, the album took shape around the creation of single ‘The Color of Despair’. The track distilled his anxieties about his new life and responsibilities, and became ground zero for the album’s sound and production, with many other songs on the album evolving out of its instrumentation and feel. The ambient lyricism present here is a testament to the narrative possibilities of instrumental music, resulting in a strikingly complete-sounding album.
Arc Lab ‘All These Worlds Are Yours’ Music Video
We’re excited to be able to share another track and music video from the amazing forthcoming Arc Lab album Anthem (28/7/16). ‘All These Worlds Are Yours’ is the sublime closing track from the album and oozes a melancholic sci-fi finality from it’s synth laden pores. The accompanying music video sets the tone with its 80’s NASA footage collaged and re-cut.
Check the video out via YouTube and pre-order your copy of Anthem now from BandCamp.
Antonymes Featured On Official Spotify Playlist
The stunning Antonymes track ‘Elegy (IV)’ has been included in the new official Spotify playlist Music For Concentration. The track sits among a set of beautiful music from the likes of Nils Frahm, Dustin O’Halloran, Jon Hopkins, Max Richter, Harold Budd, Broken Social Scene and more. Check out the playlist here.
‘Elegy (IV)’ is taken from Antonymes‘ sublime new album, (For Now We See) Through A Glass Dimly which is available now via Bandcamp and the usual 3rd party online stores. Contact Hidden Shoal for all Antonymes licensing inquiries.
Featured Track – Erik Nilsson ‘Ex Nihilo’
On ‘Ex Nihilo’, the quicksilver opener to his superb 2015 album Hearing Things, Erik Nilsson‘s impressionistic deployment of the guitar is very much in the tradition of Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis: minimal notes, maximum impact. The track beautifully sets the stage for the album to follow, putting the listener in a receptive, contemplative mood that allows Nilsson to work his magic to best effect.
New Arc Lab Single, Album Pre-Orders & Video Teaser
We’re very excited to announce the release of ‘Through The Burning Glass‘, the first single lifted from the forthcoming Arc Lab album Anthem. On ‘Through the Burning Glass’, Medard Fischer draws inspiration from the majesty of Geogaddi-era Boards of Canada and lends it his own unique twist. Combining deep, propulsive beats with a shifting matrix of synths, the track’s soaring trajectory is truly something to behold.
After years away, Medard Fischer’s Arc Lab project returns with Anthem, a retrofuturistic sci-fi travelogue. Folding classic analogue timbres and detuned FM ambience over fragmented radio broadcasts, forgotten NASA program materials and layers of deep space noise, Anthem is in turns menacing and contemplative, forbidding and epic. The album shifts between claustrophobic tension and widescreen, cinematic expanse. Crushes of static and thundering percussion sit alongside diminutive synth studies, all plotted against an almost palpable narrative of anxiety, struggle and, ultimately, salvation. It’s the grandeur of classic space opera, refracting darkly through a contemporary lens. Anthem sees release through Hidden Shoal on 28th July.
“…one of the most original releases in the IDM field in some time…confounding the set-in-stone rules of a stagnant IDM genre” – [sic] Magazine on The Goodbye Radio
Anthem will see release through Hidden Shoal on the 28th of July with pre-orders now available via Bandcamp. First single, ‘Through The Burning Glass’, is available now for streaming via SoundCloud and a beautiful album video teaser is available for streaming at YouTube and Vimeo.
Kramies & Alma Forrer ‘Into The Sparks’ (Acoustic) Video
We have a lovely little Tuesday delight for you in the form of a music video for the acoustic version of Kramies new single ‘Into The Sparks’ (feat. French chanteuse Alma Forrer). The track is a gorgeous anti-gravity ballad with Kramies and Alma’s voices reverberating amidst open acoustic guitar chords. Simply beautiful.
Check out the video at YouTube and Vimeo and head to Kramies’ BandCamp to grab yourself a free download of both the original single and this acoustic version. Be sure to check out Kramies other releases, music videos and news here and listen to more of Alma Forrer’s music here.
Memorybell “Obsolete” Released
Hidden Shoal is proud to announce the release of Obsolete, the debut album by piano minimalist Memorybell, the ambient project of Grant Hazard Outerbridge. In February 2014, Outerbridge awoke in a hospital with no memory of how he had arrived. He was diagnosed with transient global amnesia, a condition that causes the brain to temporarily stop making new memories. When he returned to the piano, Outerbridge found his previous compositions sounded garish. He pared them down to their essence and, along with new, more spacious material, constructed a set of variegated and subtle songs that explore the interplay between dissonance and silence. Recorded live in a single sitting using just a creaky grand piano and two microphones, Obsolete is as concerned with exploring the spaces between notes as the notes themselves, giving each song room to breathe and encouraging the ear to wander. The percussive qualities of the piano are almost dissolved by the air surrounding each note, leaving an aching space for the tones to resonate.
Obsolete is available now via the Memorybell Bandcamp and all good 3rd party digital stores and streaming services. Obsolete will be launched at a special show in Denver on September 1st. More details on this closer to the date.
Antonymes “Delicate Power (In The Hands Of Others)” EP, New Music Video
Hidden Shoal is proud to announce Delicate Power (In The Hands of Others), a new EP by acclaimed neo-classical ambient artist Antonymes featuring the single ‘Delicate Power’.
‘Delicate Power’ is the second single to be taken from Antonymes’ sublime new album (For Now We See) Through A Glass Dimly. The track showcases Antonymes deft musical skills with its restrained rhythms infusing the melodies with a gravitas that is at once warmly human and gravely austere. The single is accompanied by a gorgeous music video filmed by the incredible people at Chasing Light and shot on location at a beautiful, hidden otherworld in mid Wales.
The hypnotic rhythmic underpinning of ‘Delicate Power’ has invited five magical re-workings on this EP, each with its own subtle majesty. Marconi Union tease the original into a beautifully orchestrated anti-gravity ballad. Markus Mehr’s inimitable skills for re-invention have helped him to create a brooding version that draws heavily on the original’s rhythmic details. Lvmark’s reinterpretation foregrounds the melodic elements of the original, wedded to gently pulsing electronica. Alongside these three guest remixes, there are two reworkings from Antonymes himself: ‘Delicate Power’ (Waltz For Mary Anne)’ transforms the original into a beautiful, late-night swing, and ‘Delicate Power (Jung’s Drug Drum Waltz)’ lives up to the promise of its title with more heft to its woody rhythms.
Delicate Power (In The Hands of Others) is available now via Antonymes’ Bandcamp and the usual 3rd party online stores. Be sure to check out Antonymes’ sublime new album (For Now We See) Through A Glass Dimly while you’re there.
Re-Issue of Erik Nilsson’s “Recollage” Out Now!
Hidden Shoal is proud to announce the reissue of Recollage, Erik Nilsson’s superb debut album and predecessor to his sublime 2015 album Hearing Things.
There is a vibrant playfulness across Recollage’s nine tracks, with each song mapping out its own discrete world. Nilsson skilfully mixes electronics with live instruments and field recordings, before subjecting the songs to digital manipulation, creating an uncanny and arresting blend that is often as technically dizzying as it is musically and emotionally engaging. Glitchy yet exquisitely tuneful, Recollage’s music-box melodies bring to mind Björk’s Vespertine, while its compositional style is reminiscent of The Books’ cut-up approach to songcraft.
Recollage is clearly a vivid precursor to acclaimed second album Hearing Things (2015), but also its own unique creature. First released through Luxus-Artica Records in 2011, Recollage has received extra instrumentation, been fully re-mastered, and also includes the original version of album track ‘Rumore del Roma’.
“Nilsson’s work lands in something of a sweet spot for me as a listener, taking approachable bases, things possessed of an easy, lilting beauty, and then working them through this filter or that concept, finding workable juxtapositions and pushing envelopes as he goes” – Hypnagogue on Hearing Things
Download Recollage now via Erik Nilsson’s Bandcamp or find it in your favourite 3rd party online store/streaming service.
Hidden Shoal MixTape
