“… a sweeping, melancholic grandeur which never threatens to turn into bombast, but is almost enough to induce tears.” – [sic] Magazine
Textural and meticulously composed, the droning and emotive ambience of Sleeping Me is a quiet reminder of all the beauty and personal strife that is experienced in solitude. This music is an homage to the bittersweet rise and fall of fortune, the discovery and evasiveness of identity and truth, and the acceptance of distance, disappointment, and the poignancy of an ever-elusive yet omnipresent love.
Textural and meticulously composed, the emotive ambience of Sleeping Me is a quiet reminder of all the beauty and personal strife that is experienced in solitude. Tidal currents of delayed guitar carry the listener across an ocean of reverb, cast adrift beneath a brooding sky. Each track hands an elusive secret to the next, hinted at but never revealed. Sleeping Me’s masterful debut album Cradlesongs is an homage to the bittersweet rise and fall of fortune, the discovery and evasiveness of identity and truth, the acceptance of distance and disappointment, and the poignancy of an ever-elusive yet omnipresent love. From the sad, sparse introductory piece ‘Empty Cradle’ to the epic melancholy of closing track ‘The Rattle In Our Throats’, Cradlesongs demonstrates an unmatchable elegance and poise, allowing these sorrowful symphonies to extend far beyond their own discrete edges and breathe new life into a crowded genre.
Biography
Clayton McEvoy grew up in the vast expanse of desert and concrete that is California’s Inland Empire. Though initially deciding to play music for very different reasons (girls and free booze), the discovery of shoegaze and ambient music, followed by an interest in minimalist composition, would become the foundation for more focused experimentation as Sleeping Me.
Clayton has also collaborated on the new album by The Refractors (Dynamophone, 2009), and collaborates with Jorge Mantas under the name The Beautiful Schizophonic.”
Sleeping Me’s debut release Cradlesongs is an homage to the bittersweet rise and fall of fortune, the discovery and evasiveness of identity and truth, and the acceptance of distance, disappointment, and the poignancy of an ever-elusive yet omnipresent love.
Hidden Shoal is incredibly honoured to have been selected as one of Textura’s Ten Favourite Labels of 2018. Textura is, in our opinion, the premiere new music magazine and favourite of the label team for unearthing and exposing new and exciting new music. This is the second time Hidden Shoal has been selected in Textura’s best labels list and as always we are nestled against some other very special labels, all of who you should check out.
Now for a very brief and unnecessary acceptance speech – we are nothing without our incredible roster of artists, who continually amaze, inspire and surprise us. Thank you all!
Hidden Shoal is excited to end the celebration of its 10th year of existence with the new compilation album Eat Your Friends, comprising remixes and covers of Hidden Shoal artists, by Hidden Shoal artists. This freely downloadable album not only showcases the wealth of original music released through Hidden Shoal, but also the creative ingenuity and deft musical touch of the remixers and cover artists.
From searing solar-flared adaptations to delicately reconstructed covers, deep space jam reworkings, and shimmering ambient tapestries, Eat Your Friends reimagines the Hidden Shoal discography in new and beautiful ways, playing to all the strengths of the roster’s dizzying array of talent.
Includes remixes and covers by: Antonymes, Arc Lab, Glanko, Wayne Harriss, Liminal Drifter, Makee, Chloe March, Markus Mehr, Erik Nilsson, REW<<, Slow Dancing Society, Tin Manzano, Willem Gator, and Zealous Chang of music by: Arc Lab, Brother Earth, Cheekbone, City of Satellites, Medard Fischer, Gilded, Glanko & Daniel Bailey, Kryshe, Memorybell, Erik Nilsson, perth, Slow Dancing Society, Tangled Star, Umpire, and Zealous Chang.
Eat Your Friends is available now as a free download via Bandcamp and is also streamable via SoundCloud. Listen and then throw yourself into the wormhole as you explore the originals and more work by the remixers and cover artists. For all the filmmakers, games designers and others in need of engaging music, don’t forget that all tracks in our catalogue are available for licensing (film, tv, games, compilations etc).
Hidden Shoal is extremely excited to be celebrating its 10th birthday this month. It’s hard to believe that back in May 2006, Perth-based musicians Cam Merton, Stuart Medley and Malcolm Riddoch began Hidden Shoal Recordings as a means to put out releases by local artists. Tim Clarke, based in Melbourne, joined the team in 2007. Hidden Shoal has since gone on to become a much-loved independent label and publisher, releasing over 120 albums from a diverse range of international artists and licensing music from its catalogue across film, tv, web and compilation.
Stay tuned for special anniversary announcements in the coming months!
Here we present the MixTape version of Long Range Transmissions, the first in a new series of themed compilations from Hidden Shoal. The album showcases the ambient and neo-classical side of the catalogue, bringing together beautiful tracks from artists as diverse as Robert Pollard collaborator Todd Tobias, British chamber-pop songwriter Chloe March, and American ambient nostalgist Slow Dancing Society. From the delicate piano of Antonymes, Kryshe, Gilded and Medard Fischer, and the celestial experimentalism of Elisa Luu, Markus Mehr and Cheekbone, to the expansive guitarscapes of My Majestic Star, Erik Nilsson and Sleeping Me, Long Range Transmissions is an essential introduction to just one of the many facets of the Hidden Shoal label and licensing catalogue.
Long Range Transmissions is also available as a free downloadable album via BandCamp.
We’re excited to announce the release of Long Range Transmissions, the first in a new series of themed, freely downloadable compilations. Long Range Transmissions showcases the ambient and neo-classical side of the Hidden Shoal catalogue, bringing together beautiful tracks from artists as diverse as Robert Pollard collaborator Todd Tobias, British chamber-pop songwriter Chloe March, and American ambient nostalgist Slow Dancing Society. From the delicate piano of Antonymes, Kryshe, Gilded and Medard Fischer, and the celestial experimentalism of Elisa Luu, Markus Mehr and Cheekbone, to the expansive guitarscapes of My Majestic Star, Erik Nilsson and Sleeping Me, Long Range Transmissions is an essential introduction to just one of the many facets of the Hidden Shoal label and licensing catalogue.
The albums is freely downloadable via BandCamp and can also be streamed at SoundCloud and MixCloud. The album also features gorgeous artwork by Gabrielle Harcourt, with the Bandcamp download coming with a bundled PDF booklet.
Throughout the month of May 2012, Hidden Shoal Recordings is celebrating its sixth birthday. Later in the month will be the release of the latest free sampler album, Triangulating Nature, which compiles 12 singles released over the last 12 months. Other delicious surprises will be revealed in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for more info.
Since starting up in Perth, Western Australia in 2006, Hidden Shoal has developed an enviable roster of genre-defying global and local recording artists. With 40+ acts from 10+ different countries, ranging from British ambient artist Antonymes through to American musical experimentalist Todd Tobias and beyond, the committed team at Hidden Shoal continues to play an integral role in promoting exciting new independent music.
As part of our 5th birthday celebrations, we’ll be looking back at the history of Hidden Shoal, year by year, casting some light on artists and releases that may have been overlooked. For one week, all releases covered below will be available from the Hidden Shoal Store with a 30% discount. Flavoursome!
In 2009, Hidden Shoal continued to release stunning music from around the world, including debut Hidden Shoal albums from Hotels, HC-B, Tarcutta, Sleeping Me, City Of Satellites and Elisa Luu, sophomore albums from Jumpel and Wes Willenbring, a third album from Sankt Otten, and EPs from Stray Ghost and Down Review (a new collaboration between Arc Lab’s Medard Fischer and Near The Parenthesis’ Tim Arndt).
2009 was also notable for the release of our compilation album A Million Square Miles, a project endeavouring to showcase Western Australian talent to the US (the titular million square miles). After more than three years of sharing independent music far and wide, A Million Square Miles represented a key facet of the Hidden Shoal Recordings story. The album brings together a pair of tracks from each of the then eight WA-based artists on the Hidden Shoal roster: Mukaizake, Apricot Rail, Fall Electric, Glassacre, Toby Richardson, My Majestic Star, The Slow Beings and Tangled Star.
2009 also saw Hidden Shoal join forces with The Caribbean and Scott Solter in a single EP. This not only began a special relationship with the wonderful The Caribbean and created an ongoing avenue for them to release some of their more experimental offerings, but it also began the label’s relationship with Scott Solter, which eventually led us to Boxharp (Scott Solter and Wendy Allen).
We’ve just started playing with 8tracks in the hope of getting regular mixes published for your listening pleasure. We’ll test the platform out a little more and if it feels good then expect more of these to come. Here’s something gentle and exploratory to start the show.
Check out the latest edition of the wonderful Inside The Label show at New York’s awesome Breakthru Radio (home of the mighty DJ Mojo!). The show features an hour of tracks selected from across the Hidden Shoal catalogue. Lurvly!
“I am an unabashed Hidden Shoal fan. The Australian label has been pumping out releases of lush, cinematic aspirations of ambient and neo-classical artists for a better part of it’s existence that, at times, is overcome by its eclectic output ranging from conspiracy-punks to 90’s slowcore revivalists to every deriviation of weirdos (Australian and otherwise) in between. Long Distance Transmissions, however, is a surprisingly cohesive collection of sprawling ambient, electro-acoustic, post-classical and just about ever derivation (Australian and otherwise) of lushly produced, slightly melancholic, wordless music in between. Highlights include Markus Mehr’sTim Hecker-meets-Heinz Riegler meditative distorted synth composition “Hubble, the chopped and glitched electro-acoustic number by Kryshe, the minor key minimalist techno of Cheekbone and the emotional heft of the 80’s nostalgia of Slow Dancing Society’s bubbling arpeggios and soundtrack-worthy dynamics. It makes sense that Hidden Shoal also exists as a licensing company, many of these compositions, if not already, seem to soundtrack some deeply resonant scenes in films (never made).”
“Happened across this as we were turning it in for the night, a new name your price downloadable compilation by Australia’s finest purveyors of elegantly drawn dream pop Hidden Shoals. Entitled ‘long range transmissions’ it features a gathering of talents, some familiar – Antonymes, Markus Mehr, Slow Dancing Society et al along with some not so such as gilded and cheekbone. However what attracted us apart from the obvious as ever high quality seductive ambience tonalities literally peeling from the grooves was a delightful little thing from Elisa Luu entitled ‘chromatic sigh’. A breathlessly beautiful slice of porcelain noir classicism, an all too brief heavenly visitation, the slow shift into focus of the sound of a celestial calling emerging into the open to bathe all in the tingling shower of warming radiance, an out of body astral gliding odyssey which for a moment utterly transfixes its delicately balanced and perfectly poised gaze to fix and fill you with ethereal enchantment. And so to something familiar, regular visitors to these pages will be all too aware of our affection for Chloe March who here with ‘old tree, mon coeur’ doesn’t disappoint in the slightest and into the bargain offers up this sweetly mesmerising rustic ghost light, a fairy dust sprayed dream draped lost in the moment beguiling bouquet that shyly treads in the kind of amorphous star twinkled worlds of Musetta albeit as though aided and abetted by a soiree of siren sighs from a chill tripped Laetita and Mary from Stereolab.”
“You might recognise Hidden Shoal from our piece on Olive Skinned, Silver Tongued Sirens Sing Swan Songs, the latest album from REW<<. The label has recently released Long Range Transmissions, the first in a series of themed compilations which showcase the ambient/neo-classical acts in their catalogue. It’s the perfect place to introduce yourself to a diverse and interesting collective of musicians.
While the collection comes from a particular genre, there is still room for much variation across the thirteen tracks. Antonymes and Kryshe favour fragile, graceful piano, Cheekbone push a sci-fi inspired electronica and Chloe March creates a lush chamber pop. Todd Tobias evokes a mixture of shimmering bliss and nostalgia, his track ‘Nan Madol’ playing like a super-cinematic missing number from the Twin Peaks soundtrack, while Stockholm’s Erik Nilsson’s gently tropical ‘Drawing/Dreaming’ feels like watching the sun set into the sea on the last night of your holiday. Other highlights include the goosebump-inducing melodrama of Slow Dancing Society’s ‘Pull’, Elisa Luu’s ethereal ‘Chromatic Sigh’ and the aching melancholy of closing track ‘Empty Cradles’ by Sleeping Me.”
“One thing I like about reviewing records is that I can usually count on getting at least one really good sleeping record every time I get a package from the ol’ Foxy D headquarters. Not that I’m expecting a Stars Of The Lid album every time, but I usually end up with a gem on par with this one from Sleeping Me (Clayton McEvoy).
This album consists of 10 melodic, focused instrumental guitar pieces. There’s plenty of reverb and sweeping background effects, but this doesn’t feel like a mere “drone” record, the songs feel alive and breathing. As far as I can tell, all of the music (aside from some keyboard stabs on one track) was created solely by guitar, which makes the lush, oceanic feel all the more impressive. And yes, even though I already pegged this album as a record that sounds great while you’re trying to doze off, there’s really a lot going on if you pay attention.
You definitely won’t regret seeking this disc out, but if you want a quick taste, there’s a Sleeping Me EP release called “Lamenter” at archive.org for your listening pleasure. 8/10″
Excerpt: “superb debut disc… Moving from balladesque pieces that showcase McEvoy’s straightforward playing blended with a restrained electronic hand to deeply processed ambient washes where the guitar takes on a set of new identities… an easy, engaging listen that glides through this borderland and takes the listener along for the ride… you wait right along with him, and the next step always seems right… It’s artists like Sleeping Me, and his guitar-based stablemates, that keep me looking toward Hidden Shoal for intriguing new work. Cradlesongs is a Hypnagogue Highly Recommended CD.”
Excerpt (translated from the Italian): “The Australian label Hidden Shoal here confirms its cult reputation as a visionary in the discovery of new artists committed to exploring post-rock… Sleeping Me explores many nuances in the music, focusing on the subtle reflection and expansion of time… An excellent debut and a lovely new discovery in the vast constellation of instrumental acts, using melancholy and sensitivity without being overburdened with pathos.”
Excerpt: “At its best it has an elegance and poignancy that is really beautiful… ‘First Cell, First Love’ has a relentless tick-tocking guitar figure that gives it a sense of its own brief mortality… beautiful in its simplicity even if it’s relentlessly sombre. Final track ‘The Rattle In Our Throats’ has a sweeping, melancholic grandeur which never threatens to turn into bombast, but is almost enough to induce tears.”[sic]
Excerpt: “a concise, precisely calibrated set of guitar-based ambient music… gorgeous and intriguing… it’s hard not to be impressed with just how much McEvoy does here with minute alterations of volume and emphasis… a very satisfying debut. McEvoy is insightful enough in his melodies and his sense of sound design that there’s a lot here to like, and the best songs reward the kind of deep engagement that ambient music is so perversely good at engendering. If he can advance on the strengths of the best tracks here, Sleeping Me’s next album could be a classic.”
Excerpt: “every time I have put this record on I have gotten sleepy. Not in that good laid back way, but in the way you get when you can’t sleep out of fear of the dark, but still want to close your tired eyes. Cradlesongs delivers soundscapes that are by all means elegant and beautiful shoegazing ambient. Or, more correctly, instrumental introvert guitar-based slow dreamy ambient. But there is a disturbed suppressed feeling in all the pretty tones. Like the idyllic soundscapes conceal the most terrible entity. And I keep waiting for the noise that never comes… an elegant album.”
Excerpt: “‘Legs Like Gravestone’, quite a magnificent, nightmarish title, is minimalism to the max. A most elegant tune, and a bit reminiscent of some of the Constellation bands, say Godspeed You Black Emperor! – before take-off… The song spins slowly around its theme core, and it dwells along its path, or during its orbit… quite a delicate song, making me excited for more.”
Sleeping Me’s music is available for licensing (master & sync cleared) through Hidden Shoal. Please contact us with some basic details about your project and the track(s) you wish to use and we’ll be sure to get back to you straight away.
“… a sweeping, melancholic grandeur which never threatens to turn into bombast, but is almost enough to induce tears.” – [sic] Magazine
Hidden Shoal is incredibly honoured to have been selected as one of Textura’s Ten Favourite Labels of 2018. Textura is, in our opinion, the premiere new music magazine and favourite of the label team for unearthing and exposing new and exciting new music. This is the second time Hidden Shoal has been selected in Textura’s best labels list and as always we are nestled against some other very special labels, all of who you should check out.
Hidden Shoal is excited to end the celebration of its 10th year of existence with the new compilation album Eat Your Friends, comprising remixes and covers of Hidden Shoal artists, by Hidden Shoal artists. This freely downloadable album not only showcases the wealth of original music released through Hidden Shoal, but also the creative ingenuity and deft musical touch of the remixers and cover artists.
Here we present the MixTape version of Long Range Transmissions, the first in a new series of themed compilations from Hidden Shoal. The album showcases the ambient and neo-classical side of the catalogue, bringing together beautiful tracks from artists as diverse as Robert Pollard collaborator Todd Tobias, British chamber-pop songwriter Chloe March, and American ambient nostalgist Slow Dancing Society. From the delicate piano of Antonymes, Kryshe, Gilded and Medard Fischer, and the celestial experimentalism of Elisa Luu, Markus Mehr and Cheekbone, to the expansive guitarscapes of My Majestic Star, Erik Nilsson and Sleeping Me, Long Range Transmissions is an essential introduction to just one of the many facets of the Hidden Shoal label and licensing catalogue.
Throughout the month of May 2012, Hidden Shoal Recordings is celebrating its sixth birthday. Later in the month will be the release of the latest free sampler album, Triangulating Nature, which compiles 12 singles released over the last 12 months. Other delicious surprises will be revealed in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for more info.
As part of our 5th birthday celebrations, we’ll be looking back at the history of Hidden Shoal, year by year, casting some light on artists and releases that may have been overlooked. For one week, all releases covered below will be available from the Hidden Shoal Store with a 30% discount. Flavoursome!
Sleeping Me’s profoundly beautiful debut release, Cradlesongs, makes Phantom Channel’s top 10 albums of last year. Take a read here.
