Hidden Shoal News
Hotels and HSR Competition at Scene Point Blank – Win!
Head over to the excellent Scene Point Blank for a chance to win a bunch of very cool prizes including a signed copy of Hotel’s sublime On The Casino Floor. The competition will be drawn on the 1st of November and co-incides with a wonderful upcoming interview with Hotel’s Blake Madden. Check out all the info here.
Scott Solter 'The Great Cold' – Free Download!
‘The Great Cold’, by US producer Scott Solter, is taken from the re-release of his glacial ambient masterpiece One River. Chilly, gaseous tones swell and recede, all the while shadowed by a ghostly high note. Solter creates an unforgettable atmosphere, which becomes all the more moving when experienced as part of the complete album. The track is accompanied by Mark Solter and Laura Solter’s immersive, impressionistic video, in which burnished forms simultaneously suggest the vast expanses of space and the intricate textures of cellular surfaces.
“a mixture of heavily processed guitars, field recordings, and manipulated voices (provided by Wendy Allen) comparable to Brian Eno. Seven songs run seamlessly together, each inhaling and exhaling tone after tone… landscape imagery comes to mind in every song, making listening to this record not so like hearing a story as taking a journey.” – Pitchfork on Scott Solter’s One River
As a producer, recordist and mixer, Solter has worked with numerous indie artists, including Erik Friedlander, Spoon, The Mountain Goats, John Vanderslice, Lazarus, The Forms, Pattern is Movement, Superchunk, Okkervil River, Liam Singer, and St Vincent. He has also executed a number of remixes, including Scott Solter Re-Populates The Caribbean (Hidden Shoal, 2009), as well as remixes for Division Day, Voices Voices, and Neon Indian, plus Hidden Shoal band Salli Lunn’s track ‘Mirror Girl’. He is a member of The Balustrade Ensemble, producing 2007’s Capsules for Dynamophone Records, and Hidden Shoal’s very own Boxharp with Wendy Allen.
‘The Great Cold’ is available for free download from the Hidden Shoal Store. One River is released on 29 September (CD + Digital) and will be available for CD pre-orders from 15 September from n5Mailorder. View the stunning video accompaniment on Youtube or Vimeo.
[The] Caseworker 'National Runner' – Free Download!
![[The] Caseworker](https://www.hiddenshoal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/thecaseworker.jpg)
Hidden Shoal Recordings is proud to announce the release of the new single ‘National Runner’ by garage-dreampop trio The Caseworker.
With ‘National Runner’, The Caseworker have an instant pop classic on their hands. The song’s consummate balance of drone and chime features a heady mix of hypnotic guitars and driving rhythm section, all perfectly offset by Conor Devlin’s starry-eyed vocal. Learning that the track is an ode to famed Ethiopian Olympic long-distance runner Miruts Yifter makes all the more sense after being doused in its heady atmosphere.
“The Caseworker extract darkness from inside whispery, ambient pop… completely enraptured and awesomely dazed” – Rolling Stone
‘National Runner’ opens the band’s forthcoming third album Letters From The Coast, which sees The Caseworker continue to deliver their own unique sonic magic. The album has the feel of a shoegazing Velvet Underground reared by the Flying Nun label, creating an enigmatic intimacy and atmosphere, which the band wrap around immaculately crafted pop songs like smoke. Perfectly intoxicating. Letters From The Coast (Hidden Shoal, 2011) was recorded by Monte Vallier (also of the band Swell) at San Francisco’s Ruminator Audio Studios (Young Prisms, Weekend, Tommy Guerrero).
‘National Runner’ is available now as a free download. Read a full press release here. Letters From The Coast is out 22 Sept, 2011.
Slow Dancing Society at Number 4 on the KZSU Top30
The re-issue of Slow Dancing Society’s stunning Priest Lake Circa ’88 has staked its place on the KZSU Top 30, sitting at the number 4 spot on the chart. All three Slow Dancing Society re-issues have charted heavily at KZSU, so much so that Slow Dancing Society has had a presence in the charts nearly every week over the last few months or so.
This comes as we prepare for the release of the upcoming EP We Don’t Look Back For Very Long which sees Antonymes remix and re-construct one track from each of the four Slow Dancing Society albums. The release will be available as a gorgeous hand made limited edition package as well a digitally. More on this very soon!
New Hidden Shoal Signings – [The] Caseworker and Kramies
Hidden Shoal is proud to announce the signing of garage-dreampop trio [The] Caseworker and Dutch-American singer-songwriter Kramies to its roster of artists.
With each successive release, garage-dreampop trio [The] Caseworker deliver their own timeless sonic magic. Their upcoming 2011 album Letters From The Coast has the feel of a shoegazing Velvet Underground reared by the Flying Nun label – the perfect balance of drone and chime. The band creates an enigmatic intimacy and atmosphere, which they wrap around immaculately crafted pop songs like smoke. Perfectly intoxicating.
Dutch-American singer-songwriter Kramies has been honing his inimitable craft for many years, bewitching all who have heard his music along the way. Fusing masterful songwriting with electronics and atmospherics, stepping into a Kramies song means being swept up into an emotionally resonant vortex of swooning pop that simply demands repeat listens.
[The] Caseworker’s new single ‘National Runner’ is released on 18 August, with their new album Letters From The Coast released on 22 September. Kramies new EP The European is released on 22 November with a single preceding the release in October.
Umpire Reviews
Love for Umpire continues to grow as more sets of ears manage to wrap themselves around the band’s glorious debut album Now We’re Active. Along with their recent chart sucess in the US the band have also been scooping a bunch of glowing new reviews. Check out the latest batch in PopMatters, Stereo Subversion, Muso’s Guide and Leonard’s Lair.
Also lovely to hear ‘Milking a Thistle’ beaming out of the breakfast show on Triple J the other day. Nice one Tom Ballard!
Apricot Rail Single Launch and RTR Interview
Apricot Rail’s spellbinding new single ‘Surry Hills‘ see’s its official live launch this Saturday night at The Bakery in Perth. Superb support comes from newly formed supergroup The Long Lost Brothers, obscure pop wonderlanders the Andrew Sinclair and The Ritual Band and exciting newcomers Runner. Check out all the details on the the Facebook event page and miss it at your peril!
Also be sure to tune in to RTRFM Friday morning (Perth time) where the band (well two of them) will be interviewed by the lovely Peter Barr ahead fo the gig. Oh and check out the sweet little review of the single in this week’s Beat magazine (Melbourne). And if you’ve not yet nabbed your free download of the single then…….come do I need to finish that. GO HERE NOW!
Umpire "Now We're Active" US Radio Charting Madness!
Umpire’s outrageously great debut album is getting lots of deserved love including some excellent charting in its early days at radio in the US and also a bunch of glowing reviews (more on the latter soon). The album has been nestled in the official CMJ Top 30 charts at KMNR, KRNU, KWVA, WHFR, WMCX, WRBC, WSHC, KRUA and KTSW. This is still early days and these are just the ones we’ve got reporting on so far. More I say!
Hotel’s Track Placement for Rip Curl Surfing Video
Hotel’s awesome track ‘The Maudlin’ has been placed in this wonderful video about the amazing Bethany Hamilton for Rip Curl. Check out that surfing!
Scott Solter Remixes Salli Lunn – New Track and Video
Hidden Shoal Recordings today announced the release of ‘Mirror Girl (Scott Solter Remix)’, taken from the forthcoming album A Frame of Reference by Danish spectral noise-rock quartet Salli Lunn. In-demand producer, musician and remixer extraordinaire Scott Solter, well known for working with bands as diverse as Superchunk, St Vincent, Neon Indian, Pattern is Movement and Boxharp, has worked his magic with Salli Lunn’s ‘Mirror Girl’. Solter’s remix pares back the original’s spidery postpunk guitars to bring a lurching industrial rhythm section to the fore. The interplay between the clattering drums, throbbing filtered bass and Lasse Skjold Bertelsen’s vocal creates a sweaty, nocturnal atmosphere that proves alluring and addictive. The track is accompanied by a superb video by Cam Merton, Hidden Shoal label manager and experimental film-maker, which renders the dark majesty of the track as a kaleidoscopic cascade of image fragments, like some sort of psychedelic tv nightmare.
‘Mirror Girl (Scott Solter Remix)’ is taken from the forthcoming album A Frame of Reference, which includes remixes of Heresy and Rite tracks by artists such as Markus Mehr, City Of Satellites and Manual, plus all new, previously unreleased material recorded with Jonas Munk (Manual) during the Heresy and Rite sessions.
‘Mirror Girl (Scott Solter Remix)’ is available for download now from the Hidden Shoal Store and its accompanying video is available for streaming on Youtube and Vimeo. A Frame of Reference is released on 8 September 2011. Album Heresy and Rite is available worldwide in CD and digital formats through Hidden Shoal Recordings. Read a full press release here.