Hidden Shoal News
“Wealth” – Mixtape by Kryshe
On the latest Hidden Shoal mixtape, German ambient artist Kryshe picked tracks from cherished albums he owns on vinyl. The mix traces a line from ’70s German kosmische through to Talk Talk’s majestic ‘Wealth’, taking in instrumental touchstones such as Klaus Schulze, Olafur Arnalds and A Winged Victory For The Sullen along the way. In moving between cosmic synthesized soundscapes and the intimate tones of strings and piano, Kryshe explores the myriad influences that have shaped his own exquisitely subtle and detailed ambient work.
Kryshe is the live and studio-based ambient project of German musician Christian Grothe. Grothe’s music often evolves from live improvisation sessions, incorporating sound-manipulation software such as max/msp to develop a richly layered yet spacious sound. Grothe is also a member of the improvisational trio Unland, featuring ambient artist Jonas Meyer and clarinetist Shabnam Pavaresh. His releases to date are the Dreamland and In Between EPs, and the full-length release Growing. Listen to Kryshe’s music and learn more about the artist here.
Battlestations Sign to Hidden Shoal
Hidden Shoal is extremely excited to announce the signing of Belgium-based project Battlestations. All four Battlestations releases join the Hidden Shoal catalogue and are available for licensing (film, TV, games, compilations), plus a new album currently being worked on will also be released through Hidden Shoal.
Battlestations interweave the subtle with the dramatic, the intimate with the cinematic, the introverted with the bombastic. Across their eclectic and atmospheric instrumental rock, industrial ambience is counterbalanced by beautiful piano melodies, eerie samples and lyrical guitar lines. The result is incredibly evocative music, complex in both its narratives and textural composition. Hidden Shoal fans will also know Reivilo Enoignor from Battlestations as one half of the duo Involved, who released their stunning debut album Revolving Maze last year.
Listen to and purchase Battlestations’ music here and be sure to contact us with any licensing enquiries.
Mobile Moments 3.0 (featuring PERTH Soundtrack)
Check out the first short film installment for the wonderful film portraiture series Mobile Moments 3.0 featuring a soundtrack by Hidden Shoal’s PERTH. The project is presented by The Blue Room Theatre Summer Nights as a part of Fringe World 2015.
Created by Sarah Nelson, the project was conceived in 2011 for an artist residency with DADAA Inc. and was developed over a month working with youth from the Derby and Mowunjum communities in the Kimberely, Western Australia. In 2012 the project was presented as a part of the inaugural Proximity Festival, which offered not only a starkly contrasting environment as a backdrop for the films, but also a paying adult audience to the experience. The project returns for The Blue Room Theatre Summer Nights program for Fringe World 2015. Mobile Moments 3.0 will merge these extremes and play with the possibilities of chance encounters across the city. Searching the streets and approaching participants only when a moment reveals itself, the artist is out there to connect and capture with a diverse cross section of the Perth community.
MOBILE MOMENTS 3.1 from ROAD on Vimeo.
Three Questions With Giuseppe Musmeci (aka Willem Gator)
Giuseppe Musmeci is a man of many talents. He’s a self-taught composer, guitarist, electronic musician and member of the Italian post-rock outfit HC-B. His work under the Willem Gator moniker is a beautiful tapestry of atmospheric down-tempo, big basslines and oriental instrumentation, often counterpointed by urgent and angular beat-driven explorations. He creates music that is not only about ‘place’, but also deeply embedded in its own place of construction and composition. His pivotal 2011 album Hong Kong Express is testament to this approach, composed while the artist lived in a ‘cubby hole’ apartment in Kowloon.
So let’s hand it over to Giuseppe as we ask him to pull three questions out of the bag…
Who is your dream collaborator?
Definitely Peter Hook from Joy Division-New Order!
Describe your musical career in 6 words or less.
Traveling, observe, breathe, absorb and release …
If you were writing a soundtrack/score, what director would you most want to work with?
David Lynch
New Chloe March Single and Video!
We’re excited to announce the gorgeous new single and music video for the Chloë March song ‘Orpheus Head’ taken from the 2014 re-release of her album Nights Bright Days. ‘Orpheus Head’ is pure, sensual dream-pop. Its hypnotic pulsing rhythm, arpeggiated keyboards and swelling synths provide the perfect backdrop for March’s stunning vocals. Textura Magazine could not have summarised her voice’s magnetic appeal any better:
“a smoky alto that unfurls like a plume of cigarette smoke, its velvety tone a sensual narcotic… it’s hard not to think of the mythological sirens who used their hypnotic voices to lure sailors ashore.”
The music video for ‘Orpheus Head’ is available for viewing at YouTube and Vimeo and the song can be download for free via Bandcamp and streamed via SoundCloud. You can also stream Nights Bright Days and Chloe’s other releases via her artist profile.
Featured Track – DrAlienSmith ‘Guth and Zeno’
![DrAlienSmith - [ interstellar terraforming ]](http://www.hiddenshoal.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/DrAlienSmithplasterheadshot-300x300.jpg)
Al Smith, working under his DrAlienSmith moniker, makes big music and this is no further evidenced than on the track ‘Guth and Zeno’ lifted from his debut EP Under Songs. The scope of this song is not simply due to its broad, monolothic, yet layered sonic palette but also extends to the temporal and almost geophysical landscape it generates. The shifts between cavernous interstellar terraforming and atmos-laden solitude and reflection are incredibly striking and make for an emotive listening experience. This is a story too big for words and a film too visual for image. Stunning stuff!
New Music Video for Markus Mehr’s ‘Buoy’
In the new video for Markus Mehr’s ‘Buoy’, taken from his latest album Binary Rooms, the music and visuals co-exist in unnerving synchronicity. Created by Hidden Shoal’s own Cam Merton, the video’s three-dimensions are populated by blurred figures. As they move through the inky expanse, they seem to be both creating the song’s menacing soundworld with their movements, and responding to the dynamics of the music with their shadowy choreography.
Mehr’s work has seen a subtle shift in scale across his five studio albums. From the widescreen cosmic vistas of Lava to some of the more intimate moments of his 42-minute single-track opus Off, Mehr has now come to examine the most challenging space yet – that of our everyday lives and the spatial narratives that surround us. Mehr’s music has always possessed a keen sense of and negotiation with scale, and on Binary Rooms he challenges notions of personal space, juxtaposing the human against the industrial, the gentle and intimate against the jolting and harsh. Mehr acts as a fragment hunter, meshing machine-like tones with the discarded elements of humanity; narrative with anti-narrative. On Binary Rooms he manages to create a spatial remix – a striking re-design of aural reality filled with a living, digital biology.
Check out Binary Rooms and Mehr’s other releases here and watch the video for ‘Buoy’ at Youtube or Vimeo.
The October Solution Sign to Hidden Shoal
Hidden Shoal fans will be delighted at the news of our signing of dream-rock architects of The October Solution. Although the band name may not be familiar, its members certainly will be: The October Solution are Drew Sullivan (Slow Dancing Society, City of Satellites) and Jarrod Manuel (City of Satellites). While steeped in ’80s nostalgia, their music moves beyond familiar tropes to stand as defiantly futuristic and progressive. As you would expect from Sullivan and Manuel’s lineage, their songs resonate with soaring guitars, ethereal vocals, and deftly woven pop melodies, melding the incandescent ambient sounds of Slow Dancing Society within the propulsive songcraft of City of Satellites.
The band’s debut full-length, Axis Swim Scar, will be released through Hidden Shoal on the 15th of April, with the first single dropping on the 25th of February. Hidden Shoal will also be releasing a deluxe re-issue of the band’s first two EPs later in the year.
Kramies French Tour in April!
French citizens prepare to be dazzled as dreampop troubadour Kramies lands in April to play some shows and tape some performances. We’ll give you a list below but we thought we should make special mention of his big show on the April 8 at the Grand Theatre in Angers supporting the wonderful French outfit A Singer Must Die who will be backed a chamber orchestra. Cool right? Here’s a list of the shows and sessions with two more hopefully announced soon:
April 7th – Showcase at the FNAC Record Store in Angers
April 8th – Grand Theatre in Angers
April 10th – The Jokers Pub in Angers
April 11th – Le Cargo session in Paris (Studio only and published online)
April 11th – Frogg’y Delight Session in Paris (Studio only and published online)
We’ll give more details as we get a little closer. For now though watch Kramies as he gives a nod and a smirk to Bob Dylan and bi-bilingually tells us about one of his forthcoming shows.
Willem Gator Signs to Hidden Shoal
We’re excited to welcome the wonderful Willem Gator (aka Giuseppe Musmeci) to the Hidden Shoal family. Willem Gator creates a unique blend of downtempo beats, fat basslines and a multitude of oriental and orchestral instruments. Musmeci is a self-taught composer, guitarist, electronic musician and member of the Italian post-rock outfit HC-B. Musmeci’s rich background in electronic music production and keen sense of texture sees him creating highly distinctive music under his Willem Gator moniker: “My music is photography of a time, of the people I met and the emotion they gave to me.” Willem Gator has performed throughout Europe, sharing the stage with musicians such as FM Einhet (Einsturzende Neubauten), Flying Luttenbachers, Unsane, DJ Spooky, Pansonic, Nobokazu Takemura, U-Cef, Battles and Art Brut.
Two Willem Gator albums have now been added to the Hidden Shoal catalogue, Touch Me and I Will Save You (2008) and Hong Kong Express (2011). All songs are available for licensing for film, tv, web, games, compilations and more. Stream the albums here and contact us if you’d like to know more.
Hidden Shoal MixTape
