Hidden Shoal is excited to announce the availability of CD pre-orders and digital downloads for Medicine Show, the debut solo album by musical experimentalist, Guided By Voices producer and long-time Robert Pollard collaborator Todd Tobias. All CD orders come with an immediate download of the album as well as an exclusive bonus download of the previously un-released Night Above Ground EP.
After years of producing Guided By Voices, playing in Circus Devils with Robert Pollard, and helping to create the music for Pollard’s solo albums, Todd Tobias is striking out on his own with his debut solo album. Defiantly unique and vividly realised, Medicine Show is a multi-faceted instrumental opus, evoking a shadowy steampunk dystopia. By turns nightmarish and hauntingly beautiful, the three-dimensional musical universe that Tobias conjures across 40 minutes is totally addictive. From the dark GBV-esque groove of ‘Night of the Club Foot’, through the gaseous synths of ‘Pre-Dawn Visitation’, evoking a hallucinogen-fuelled walk among a misty moon-lit forest, to the visceral lurch of single ‘Manatoc Enters The City / The Long Fall’, Medicine Show plays out like the soundtrack to a Terry Gilliam movie starring Tom Waits, each song a totally immersive scene, leading inexorably into the next.
“A psychedelic boat ride that leads to a poorly lit and wicked place, where even the nursery rhymes of youth become foreboding…” – AllMusic on Circus Devils’ Ringworm Interiors
Head to the Hidden Shoal Store to preview and order the album ahead of its official release on the 26th of April. The CD comes as a limited numbered edition of 200 in a beautiful Stuart Medley designed, 4 panel gatefold with insert. All CD orders come with an immediate download of the album as well as an exclusive bonus download of the previously un-released Night Above Ground EP.