Hidden Shoal News
New Album "Voices Out There" from [The] Caseworker Now Available!
We’ve been bursting at the seems to release this amazing album! It is of course Voices Out There, the fourth album by garage-dreampop trio [The] Caseworker. Voices Out There sees the band rein in the lo-fi guitar-pop impulses of acclaimed third album Letters From The Coast to explore a more expansive, minimal sound, akin to Conor and Eimer Devlin’s previous band Half Film. The band manage to channel the best of Flying Nun’s roster and merge it with their inimitably dreamy and atmospheric take on rock music.
“[The] Caseworker extract darkness from inside whispery, ambient pop… completely enraptured and awesomely dazed” – Rolling Stone
First single ‘Dependence Day’ marries [The] Caseworker’s trademark restraint with a strident, slowburning melodic sensibility, while the title track vividly surveys the morphine hallucinations Conor experienced while confined to a hospital bed in Switzerland. The album’s chiming guitars, gently bobbing rhythm section and warm yet dislocated vocals from both Conor and Eimer Devlin generate a sense of intimacy and fragility that is deeply affecting. What’s most apparent on these songs is of a band in absolute control of their craft, able to derive maximum emotional heft from minimal ingredients.
Voices Out There is available now in CD and digital formats. All CD orders include an immediate download of the album in mp3 or FLAC formats and all downloads come with a beautiful extended digital booklet. Head to the Hidden Shoal Store for all the details.
[The] Caseworker – ‘Voices Out There’ (Single)
[The] Caseworker and Monocle Reviews
More lovely reviews rolling in for Hidden Shoal releases. This time Monocle‘s brilliant new album Transpacific Sound Paradise has just been lovingly reviewed at Leonard’s Lair and [The] Caseworker‘s latest single and title track to their forthcoming album Voices Out There has just been reviewed at The Sunday Experience as well as the Polish blog Polyphonia.
Head to the Hidden Shoal Store to check out the above releases by Monocle and [The] Caseworker along with free downloads and previous albums.
Monocle – ‘Chances Glide’
New Kramies EP (feat. Jason Lytle of Grandaddy) Out Now!
We’re very excited to finally be able to share this absolutely stunning new release from Colorado-based dream-pop maestro Kramies. The Wooden Heart EP features the production and instrumental talents of Jason Lytle of Grandaddy fame, along with the inimitable production and additional instrumentation of Robert Pollard co-conspirator Todd Tobias. The EP mines a wonderfully rich seam of atmospheric yet epic songcraft that Kramies has made his own. From the throbbing ambient introduction of ‘The Beginning’ through to the delicate folk of ‘The Ending’, Kramies’ new EP covers vast emotional and musical terrain during its 23-minute run-time. The title track’s windswept grandeur is married to an emotional directness that demands your attention and doesn’t let go, ‘Sea Otter Cottage’ sways and swoons with an almost unbearable poignancy, and ‘Clocks Were All Broken’ both alludes to and embodies this music’s timeless appeal.
“In the middle, the song holds its breath for half a moment, then rises into a blissful dream-pop threshing; a massed quilt of hammering Slowdive-ian guitars joyfully plunging down onto each beat. “Spill out the haven, throw my maths chart away, ‘cos you’re the one,” Kramies sings, in an exultant sigh. “Throw my maps, a castaway.” It’s rare to find dream-pop that resolves with such assured optimism, in which you can sense experience shifting into its proper place… Kramies seems to have mastered the talent of simply breathing it into shape.” – Misfit City on the EP’s title track.
The album is available in digital format as well as a very limited edition CD (limited to 50 units). The EP features artwork by the wonderful French photographer Jérôme Sevrette and all downloads include a beautiful extended digital booklet with lyrics and more of Jérôme’s work. Check out the album at our store or on Bandcamp, download the first single for free, and check out this lovely little video for the EP’s parting track ‘The Ending’.
Enjoy!
Kramies – ‘The Wooden Heart’ (Single)
Kramies 'The Wooden Heart' Single Reviewed at Misfit City
Just ahead of the release of Kramies‘ stunning new EP The Wooden Heart the lead single and title track have just been reviewed over at one of our favourite music blogs Misfit City. Here’s a taste,
“In the middle, the song holds its breath for half a moment, then rises into a blissful dream-pop threshing; a massed quilt of hammering Slowdive-ian guitars joyfully plunging down onto each beat. “Spill out the haven, throw my maths chart away, ‘cos you’re the one,” Kramies sings, in an exultant sigh. “Throw my maps, a castaway.” It’s rare to find dream-pop that resolves with such assured optimism, in which you can sense experience shifting into its proper place. While Kavus and Knifeworld constantly quest for resolution – and spin some dazzling pirouettes along the way – Kramies seems to have mastered the talent of simply breathing it into shape.” – Misfit City
Read the full review at Misfit City and download the single for free from the Hidden Shoal Store.
New Single and Music Video from [The] Caseworker – Free Download
We have an absolutely beautiful new single and stunning accompanying music video for you from garage-dreampop trio [The] Caseworker. ‘Voices Out There’, the title track to their forthcoming new album (24th October), is available now as a free download and for streaming on SoundCloud. The accompanying 3D animated music video by Cam Merton, Hidden Shoal label manager and experimental film-maker, is available for streaming on YouTube and Vimeo.
Of all the songs on Voices Out There, the title track is most explicitly coloured by Conor Devlin’s experience of recovering from a serious car accident in 2012. ‘Voices Out There’ vividly surveys the morphine hallucinations experienced while confined to a hospital bed in Switzerland. The song’s chiming modulated guitars, gently bobbing rhythm section and warm yet dislocated vocals generate a sense of intimacy and fragility that is deeply affecting. The track’s 3d animated music video visually renders the intimate, surreal and dislocated spatiality conveyed so beautifully in the song.
The track is lifted from the band’s fourth album, and their second for Hidden Shoal, Voices Out There, which sees [The] Caseworker rein in the lo-fi guitar-pop impulses of acclaimed third album Letters From The Coast to explore a more expansive, minimal sound, akin to Conor and Eimer Devlin’s previous band Half Film. The band maintain their enigmatic intimacy and atmosphere, while suggesting haunting vistas just beyond the horizons of these succinct, sad songs.
[The] Caseworker – ‘Voices Out There’ from Hidden Shoal Recordings on Vimeo.
New Music Video from Kramies Forthcoming EP
In less than two weeks we get to share the absolutely beautiful new EP from Colorado-based dream-pop merchant Kramies. The Wooden Heart (Oct. 17th) features the production and instrumental talents of Jason Lytle of Grandaddy fame, along with the inimitable production and additional instrumentation of Robert Pollard co-conspirator Todd Tobias.
We’ve already released the first taste of the album with the epic title track which you can stream or download for free. We now present another sneak peak into the EP with this mesmerising short video for the parting track from the release ‘The Ending’. Check it out below or stream it directly from YouTube or Vimeo.
Fantastic Review of Markus Mehr's "Live In Bari" at Cyclic Defrost
Check out this fantastic review of Markus Mehr‘s brilliant live album Live In Bari over at Cyclic Defrost. Here’s a taste,
“The sounds just feel organic, not trapped inside circuitry. Coming after a decade or so of solo, loop based, ambient-noise explorations of every shade, the fact that Mehr has created a piece, within these parameters, that doesn’t sound stale, rote or like an artist going through the motions is an achievement in itself. That is imminently listenable, evocative and beautiful as well is a great bonus. The hearty applause at the end of the set is thoroughly justified.” – Cyclic Defrost
If you’ve not heard Live In Bari yet then you’ve got no excuse as this sublime live recording is available for free download from the Hidden Shoal Store!
perth Featured at PerfectMidnightWorld and Mess & Noise
The fantastic music blog PerfectMidnightWorld has just dropped a loving write up for the just released single ‘Drank and Kites and Tomorrow’ by perth. Check out a taste of it here,
“The track opens with a sighing brass arrangement that feels as melancholic as it does triumphant, and is soon joined by layers of skittering beats and heavenly ambient tones. The extended intro pulses alive and soon the the sounds melt into a spiraling electro-psych-pop wonder, drenched in swirling, warm electronics and vocals cloaked in hushed reverb. Before you know it, you’re wrapped in a warped psych pop lullaby that would feel right at home on a Spiritualized record. The track has an exciting sense of discovery that opens itself up like a new dawn sun, expanding further into fertile new territory with each passing second.” – PerfectMidnightWorld
The lovely folks over Mess & Noise have also just featured the new perth single and wrote up the album for their Forthcoming Releases segment.
‘Drank and Kites and Tomorrow’ is available now as a free download from the Hidden Shoal Store. The track lands ahead of the release of perth’s sophomore full length What’s Your Utopia? our November 14.
Kramies 'The Wooden Heart' Single Reviews and Features
Kramies‘ sublime new dreamgaze single ‘The Wooden Heart’, taken from his forthcoming EP of the same name (October 17), has recently been receiving the kind of love a song like this deserves. First up the wonderful Mark Barton over at The Sunday Experience blog gave the track a glowing write up, then the fantastic Hey Reverb made the track one of their “Steal This” feature spots along with a beautiful review and last up for this little roundup the excellent French magazine Obskure recently wrote a lovely little pre-release review of the EP.
“Pressed upon celestial arcs that usher in distant memories of the mercurial melodic musings of slowdive and chapterhouse at their most fragile and angelic peaks, ’the wooden heart’ is wrapped longingly in snow bursting showers of dream dipped porcelain signatures so intricately woven, airless and frail that you fear they will shatter just by your closeness in earshot of them, a beautified aural apparition teased in yearning introspection and sweetly glazed in the kind of unworldly rapture that suggests its author is well versed in the songbook craft of the crimea and mirror mirror.” – The Sunday Experience
If you haven’t secured your free copy of ‘The Wooden Heart’ single then head to the Hidden Shoal Store and download yourself some melodic majesty.
New perth Single 'Drank and Kites and Tomorrow' (Free Download) !
We’re super excited to announce the release of the fantastic new single ‘Drank and Kites and Tomorrow’ from Australian experimental popsters perth. The track is lifted from their highly anticipated sophomore album What’s Your Utopia? out November 14th through Hidden Shoal. Download the single now at the Hidden Shoal Store and via Bandcamp or stream it over at SoundCloud.
There’s a triumphant yet subtle majesty to ‘Drank and Kites and Tomorrow’ as the track summons forth glowing brass arrangements, reverb-drenched vocals and skittering breakbeats crafted from found sounds. What begins as an addictive dream-pop tune with a wonderfully bucolic atmosphere builds into a krautrock jam reminiscent of Neu! and Caribou if they’d used ocarina and Casiotone. This opening to their forthcoming sophomore album is a delicious portal into perth’s incandescent musical universe.
perth’s forthcoming album What’s Your Utopia? manages to meld psychedelic pop, folk-laced electronica and shoegaze into a beautifully cohesive statement – a tribute to the idea of a fond place, or utopia, quietly residing in ‘no place’, beyond ourselves. The band’s magic lies in their ability to refract the individual members’ unique sensibilities through an experimental lens.
The band’s debut Babes, Water, Waves landed in a number of best of 2012 lists and scooped glowing reviews wherever it was covered. Here’s a quick taste,
“a record that has surpassed all expectation… combines elements of post-rock, electronica and psych, but this genre-collage never feels forced. Instead, it’s a well-constructed body of work that sounds more accomplished than any debut record I’ve heard in quite a while” – Life is Noise on Babes, Water, Waves
perth – ‘Drank and Kites and Tomorrow’