Hidden Shoal News
Featured Track – HC-B ‘Hot Afternoon in The Bull’s Square’
It’s hard to believe Sicilian quintet HC-B released their masterpiece Soundcheck for a Missing Movie back in 2009. Those who thought this was the last great sonic document from the band will be pleased to know it’s not and that we have some exciting news on what’s to come from HC-B in 2015 (soon!). So what better time to reflect on one of the centerpieces of Soundcheck for a Missing Movie, ‘Hot Afternoon in The Bull’s Square’. Now I had planned to wax lyrical about this song as it excites me every time I listen to it, but then I stumbled on a quote from the awesome US college radio station WRUV that summed up everything I wanted to say,
“Quality Instrumental Post-Rock with a fierce emotion that will blast your face off for its entirety… The songs blend together to form a tsunami of shredding guitars, loud violins, free horns, booming basses and hammering drums… One of the greatest of its genre.” – WRUV
Now listen and hear why every word of that quote is spot on.
Chloe March vs. Markus Mehr – “To Set The River On Fire” EP
Hidden Shoal is excited to announce the new EP To Set The River On Fire, the first in an ongoing “versus” remix series which sees two Hidden Shoal artists remix each other’s music. We have a cracker to start things off – English dream-pop artist Chloë March takes on a track from the latest album by German experimentalist Markus Mehr – and vice versa.
Listening to ‘Buoy (Chloë March Remix)’ feels like watching Chloë March creep tentatively into Markus Mehr’s shadowy soundworld, casting her radiant voice around the room like torchlight. While on ‘Ember (Markus Mehr Remix)’, the original’s beautifully simple arrangement for voice and piano is trapped within a hall of industrial-sized mirrors, anxiously roving around in search of escape. Each remix complements the other, masterfully re-interpreting the source material while inviting fresh listens to the original. The EP consists of the two remixes as well as the original tracks and is available as a free download via BandCamp as well as a full EP stream on SoundCloud. All songs are also available for licensing via Hidden Shoal.
Antonymes Guest Mix at Headphone Commute
The ridiculously talented Ian Hazeldine (aka Antonymes) has produced a stunning mixtape for Headphone Commute entitled The Spaces Between Seconds. Let’s hand it over to the man himself to explain,
“When Headphone Commute asked me to produce a mix I was truly honoured. I wanted to deliver something very different to any mix I’d done before. I’d been listening to a lot of jazz and wanted it to be a focus. The starting point was Jimmy Scott’s astonishing vocal on “Sycamore Tree”. For this reason it sits in the exact centre of the mix. I’ve included pieces by long admired artists and dear friends. Music is a special, powerful thing. I’ve been on magical, spiritual journey since my first musical awakening in 1967. Listen, appreciate and enjoy. This mix is dedicated to my dearly missed mother. “ – Antonymes
Check out the mix below and listen to the entire Antonymes catalogue here.
Antonymes – The Spaces Between Seconds by Headphone Commute on Mixcloud
“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.
Hidden Shoal MixTape
