Apricot Rail
“The might of, I dunno, Mogwai is still there, but the charm of Múm is also present. They paint mountains in broad strokes but afterwards they take time to put in Sherpas and goats partying on the cliff face.” – Love Is My Velocity
Most instrumental rock suggests the apocalypse is coming. If it is, Apricot Rail are too busy crafting beautiful lilting melodies to care. This Perth sextet have the charm, humour and songwriting nous – and a killer live show – to re-ignite anyone’s belief in music’s subtle, giddy powers.
Discography
Quarrels
February 2013
Almost four years after the release of their acclaimed self-titled debut album, Perth-based multi-instrumental pop sextet Apricot Rail return with their sophomore album Quarrels, which features the singles ‘Basket Press’ and ‘Surry Hills’. A foray into more experimental territory, Quarrels features lusher, denser instrumentation, is rich in ideas yet toys with new levels of restraint. The band’s trademark harmonic guitar passages and syncopation sit beneath languid brass and woodwind, balanced by glitchy electronica, dramatic crescendos and opium-infused oriental explorations; slow, meandering waltzes give way to moments of ethereal lightness and beauty. This music transcends fads and trends to appeal to anyone drawn to beautiful, supple songcraft. The majority of Quarrels was recorded over a four-day period during January 2012 in an isolated farmhouse in Western Australia’s bleak Central Wheatbelt. Instruments were sprawled across a lounge room and picked up at will by the players and in turn by microphones placed in different corners of the room. Back in Perth the real work began, with Justin Manzano going through the recordings, making adjustments and adding the odd track to the collection. Towards the end of 2012, the album was mixed by indie producer extraordinaire Scott Solter and mastered by Simon Struthers (Umpire, Muzaizake).
Surry Hills EP
July 2011
Features exclusive bonus tracks previously only available on a limited run cd-r available at the ‘Surry Hills’ launch show. ‘Surry Hills’ is a stunning new song from the much-beloved Apricot Rail that gradually blooms from a shimmering haze of harmonics and ride cymbal into a delicious interweave of resonant guitars and woodwind melodies. The song’s restraint becomes its strength as the hairs on the back of your neck slowly rise. Inhabiting a similar sonic space to Sweden’s marvellous trio Tape, ‘Surry Hills’ is destined to garner a fresh new raft of fans for Apricot Rail’s addictive brand of melodic instrumental pop. After the success of their debut album, ideas for new Apricot Rail songs, including ‘Surry Hills’, were formulated during the band’s extended break late in 2009, after which the songs were road-tested live. While ‘Surry Hills’ maintains a minimalist, restrained and rustic feel typical of Apricot Rail’s debut album, the track also represents a shift in instrumental duties for the band, with new member (number 6!) Justin Manzano (Tin Man) playing guitar, Matt Saville moving from drums to glockenspiel, Daniel Burt moving from bass to percussion, and Jack Quirk moving from guitar to keyboards/electronics, along with Ambrose Nock on guitar and Mayuka Juber on flute.
Apricot Rail (Self Titled)
July 2009
Apricot Rail produce some of the most discretely charming, lush instrumental pop music you’re likely to hear all year. Delicate, bell-like arpeggiated guitars weave around snaking clarinet and flute, while the beautifully held back yet sanguine rhythm section drives the whole thing into a blurred, sun-soaked horizon. Their debut album features the wonderfully received single ‘Pouring Milk Out The Window’, an anthem without ever having to be anthemic, a melancholic reverie that never resorts to the emotional ease of sadness. ‘If You Can’t Join Them, Beat Them’, which featured on the 2009 Spunk Singles Club compilation album, is another chiming standout. And gorgeous closing track ‘Halfway House’ weaves in bubbling electronics as the band lead the listener through glowing landscapes and light-drenched vistas.
Biography
One day, after his star sign promised a ‘dynamic’ afternoon, Ambrose Nock (guitar) decided it was the right time to form a band known as Apricot Rail. He was soon joined by Jack Quirk (guitar), Matthew Saville (drums) and Daniel Burt (bass). The premise of the band was simple: music based on unique guitar tunings, the use of natural harmonics, and very open ideas about other instruments, electronica and song structure. After a debut gig at the Hyde Park Hotel in March 2008 with four members and as many songs, the band soon added a fifth in Mayuka Juber (clarinet/flute), redefining the balance of guitars with the addition of beautiful woodwind melodies.
The band’s debut recording was a DIY affair, with members heading off to a rural property near Yorkrakine, 220km north-east of Perth in WA’s Central Wheatbelt. In the following months, the resulting demo got regular rotation on Perth’s RTRFM, and though unreleased, was rated by the station’s Homegrown presenter Chris Wheeldon as his second-favourite local outing of 2008. In the second half of the year, Apricot Rail chalked up some serious gig mileage, along the way supporting the likes of Holly Throsby, Charge Group and Adam Said Galore and finding refuge among Perth’s emerging post-rock/experimental scene.
In November 2008 the band headed into Kingdom studios under the guidance of Simon Struthers (Umpire, Adam Said Galore, Mukaizake) where the band recorded their soon to be released self-titled debut long player. Australian fans got a chance to taste some of the new album’s sublime wares when the Apricot Rail track ‘If You Can’t Join Them, Beat Them’ was released on the prestigious Spunk Singles Club compilation album along with the likes of Leader Cheetah, The Dead Sea and The Middle East. The band was also recently nominated for Favourite Newcomer in the 2009 Western Australian Music Industry Awards.
Apricot Rail are:
Jack Quirk – Guitar, Glock, Trumpet, Electronica, Voice
Daniel Burt – Bass guitar, Saxophone
Matt Saville – Drum Kit/Percussion
Mayuka Juber – Clarinet, Flute, Keyboard, Melodica, Voice
Ambrose Nock – Guitar, Glock, Keyboard
Justin Manzano – Guitar, Electronics
News
New Apricot Rail Track and Upcoming Show
Apricot Rail fans rejoice! After years in the shadows, the band have leapt into the light with a new track and their first live performance in what feels like forever. ‘‘Romance Under the Blossom Tree’ sneaks out ahead of their performance at RTRFM’s Springtime Social on November 5th. Stream then track here and buy tickets for the show here.The music of Apricot Rail is available for licensing via Hidden Shoal (film, tv, web games etc). Check here for more details.
Continue reading →Target Archery “The Nomenclature of Kites” Out Now!
We’re very excited to announce the release of The Nomenclature of Kites, the second album from Perth-based indie-pop project Target Archery. The album is available now for download via Bandcamp, streaming via Spotify and from all the other usual online stores and streamers. Be sure to also check out the music video for the album track ‘The Flat Earther and his Rocket’ on YouTube.Target Archery’s The Nomenclature of Kites further refines Target Archery’s incandescent blend of left-of-centre guitar music and Icelandic post-pop. The album journeys from Middle America and the absurd story of ‘Mad Mike’ Hughes, the flat-earther who built his own rocketship, to nights out in Perth’s inner east. Primarily written and recorded in the Western Australian wheatbelt by Ambrose Nock (Apricot Rail), the new album was produced by Justin Manzano and features contributions from Matt Harley (vocals) and Majuka Juber (vocals, woodwinds, pianet).
“Sitting somewhere between alt-folk, alt-pop, and post-rock… Endearing, but not without gravitas, the music is playful and yet full of emotion and drama too” – Overblown on Clock of the Long Now
Following on from his work with Perth’s sun-dappled musical instrumentalists Apricot Rail, Ambrose Nock explores the fertile realm of delicate, experimental post-pop with his new project Target Archery. Influenced by the likes of Sound Dust-era Stereolab, left-of-centre indie-pop bands such as Lacto-Ovo, The Go! Team and Ninetynine, and a dash of late ’80s Sonic Youth, Target Archery mine an inspiring new seam of life-affirming melodies and instrumental texture.
The music of Target Archery is available for licensing (film, tv, web and more) via Hidden Shoal.
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“By any other Name” RTRFM Feature Album and Interview
The sublime new Hidden Shoal remix compilation, By any other name, is this week’s RTRFM local feature album! Tracks will be featured on a range of shows across the week so be sure to tune in. Be sure to also check out the wonderful interview at the station with Ben Da Cruz and Sue Summers on the processes and ideas behind the album. The album is available now as a free download via Bandcamp and to stream via Spotify and SoundCloud.For By any other name, Hidden Shoal invited a number of emerging Perth artists to rework a selection of tracks from the label’s catalogue. With 11 artists reimagining tracks by Target Archery, Erik Nilsson, Glanko & Daniel Bailey, Summon the Birds, Chloe March and Isophene, what’s most striking about By any other name is both the expansive nature of the individual tracks, and the cohesiveness of the overall listening experience.
By any other name features remixes by Boy In Nature, Austy, Alexi, Michael Tyrie, Sue Summers, Ryan Jose, Daniel Zinetti, Crier, Cron, Shane Isard and JW. Boy In Nature infuses the languid tones of Target Archery’s ‘Opium Den’ with an effervescent buoyancy. On Michael Tyrie’s reimagining of Summon the Birds’ ‘Tactile Hallucination’, the structure of the song is inverted, with the epic climax acting as a cinematic scene-setter. Cron’s re-envisioning of Glanko & Bailey’s ambient masterpiece ‘Adiaphora’ injects the original with urgency without losing its sense of grandeur. And Daniel Zinetti’s brilliant deconstruction of Chloe March’s ‘Old Tree Mon Coeur’ breaks the original into a thousand pieces and then ejects them into space.
As always this music is available for licensing for film, tv, games and more through Hidden Shoal.
Continue reading →Hidden Shoal in Textura’s Ten Favourite Labels of 2018 List!
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!
Continue reading →Hidden Shoal Artists Featured on Rudy Maxa Soundtrack
The new episode from the award winning Rudy Maxa’s World is airing tonight on PBS. Why should you care about this Emmy award winning tv show? Besides being a brilliant travel show that uses food and local producers to tell it’s stories, it also features music licensed by Hidden Shoal from Willem Gator, Apricot Rail, PERTH and Kryshe. We also have a number of tracks featured on previous and future episodes, so keep your eyes out! Read more about the show here.Hidden Shoal has an incredible catalogue of music available for licensing. Read more about our services here.
Continue reading →Target Archery Joins the Hidden Shoal Family!
We’re super excited to announce the signing of Target Archery, the newest project of Ambrose Nock, to the Hidden Shoal family. Following on from his work with Perth’s sun-dappled musical instrumentalists Apricot Rail, Ambrose Nock explores the fertile realm of delicate, experimental post-pop with his new project Target Archery. Influenced by the likes of Sound Dust-era Stereolab, left-of-centre indie-pop bands such as Lacto-Ovo, The Go! Team and Ninetynine, and a dash of late ’80s Sonic Youth, Target Archery mine an inspiring new seam of life-affirming melodies and instrumental texture.Crafted in an isolated studio in rural Western Australia over a period of three years, debut release Clock of the Long Now is an exploration of delicate, experimental post-pop. The album features contributions from Apricot Rail members Justin Manzano (production and instrumentation) and Jack Quirk (guitars). The album will see release on the 2nd of October with the first single dropping on the 4th of September.
Continue reading →Apricot Rail Announced for In The Pines 2017
After yelling out Craig Hallsworth‘s inclusion to the In The Pines 2017 line-up we can now excitedly add another Hidden Shoal band to the list in the form of the mighty Apricot Rail. Craig Hallsworth and Apricot Rail will play alongside the likes of Jebediah, Sodastream, Institut Polaire, Childsaint, Doctopus, Tangled Thoughts of Leaving and many more. In The Pines is an RTRFM and Perth yearly institution with the line up and even never failing to impress. It all happens on the 30th April with pre-sale tickets available now for a ridiculously cheap $35 or $30 if you’re an RTRFM subscriber. All details available here.
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Apricot Rail and Craig Hallsworth in Tone Deaf Best Of List!
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Apricot Rail’s ‘Scarecrow’ and Craig Hallsworth’s ‘We’re Too Far Away (My Other Future, My Other Youth)’ have been featured in Will Backler’s (RTRFM Music Director) “The 8 Best Aussie Songs You Haven’t Heard” list over at Tone Deaf. Nice!Eat Your Friends: A Hidden Shoal 10th Anniversary Compilation
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).
Continue reading →Apricot Rail Featured on MAAMF Mixtape
Apricot Rail’s ‘Scarecrow’ is featured on the very last (ever!) MAAMF mixtape! Sad to see the world lose the wonderful Australian blog but what a tape to go out on.
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Reviews
Target Archery Debut Out Now – Vinyl and Digital
Hidden Shoal is proud to announce the release of Clock of the Long Now, the debut album by Perth-based post-pop project Target Archery. The album is available for purchase on vinyl and as a free download via Bandcamp and will be out on Spotify, iTunes and all other good 3rd party stores soon. The album will be launched at the Rosemount (Perth, Western Australia) on October 20.Following on from his work with Perth’s sun-dappled musical instrumentalists Apricot Rail, Ambrose Nock explores the fertile realm of delicate, experimental post-pop with his new project Target Archery. Influenced by the likes of Sound Dust-era Stereolab, left-of-centre indie-pop bands such as Lacto-Ovo, The Go! Team and Ninetynine, and a dash of late ’80s Sonic Youth, Target Archery mine an inspiring new seam of life-affirming melodies and instrumental texture.
Featuring contributions from Apricot Rail members Justin Manzano (production and instrumentation) and Jack Quirk (guitars), Clock of the Long Now was crafted in an isolated studio in rural Western Australia over a period of three years. Across 40 blissful minutes, Target Archery weave a suite of glimmering musical tapestries that expand beyond the borders of conventional guitar pop.
“The might of, I dunno, Mogwai is still there, but the charm of Múm is also present. They paint mountains in broad strokes but afterwards they take time to put in Sherpas and goats partying on the cliff face.” – Love Is My Velocity on Apricot Rail
As with all Hidden Shoal releases, Target Archery’s music is available for licensing (film, tv, games, compilations). Contact Hidden Shoal for more info.
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Apricot Rail ‘Scarecrow’ Reviewed at The Sunday Experience
“Welcome return of one of hidden shoal’s best kept secrets, the utterly adorable Apricot Rail herewith a new track entitled ‘scarecrow’. This twinkle toed gem snoozes, stretches and delicately rises whittling out an affectionately woodcrafted spring sprayed serenade whose dainty demur somewhat shyly plays hide and seek in the early morn twilight mists showering all in a gorgeously hazy rustic vintage that’s much reminiscent of that cosily cute recent Littlebow set for second language.”
Continue reading →Apricot Rail 'Dore Strauch' Reviewed at The Sunday Experience
“Staying with Hidden Shoal a little while longer, now this is quite simply arresting, been a while since we hooked up to the sounds of Apricot Rail, I seem to recall their last visitation in these pages many, many years ago had us all seductively cooed and frankly speechless in adoring admiration. It seems Perth’s finest have a new single out, ‘dore strauch’ be its name, lifted from their ‘Quarrels’ album which I’m suspecting we need to hear as soon as, this honey is pure pastoral kaleidoscopia. Woodwinds, glockenspiels and the ornate rustic reel of folk madrigals weave a sumptuously hypnotic haven of vintage village green follies by way of an ageless craft honeyed in a regal pepper-corning that could easily be a spell crafting Ozric Tentacles lassoed from their astral planes and moored to some lush green idyllic meadow whittling woodcuts with circulus and sproatly smith under the watchful proud eye of a certain Mr Oldfield.”
Continue reading →Apricot Rail 'Dore Strauch' Reviewed at God Is In The TV
“Staying with Hidden Shoal a little while longer, now this is quite simply arresting, been a while since we hooked up to the sounds of Apricot Rail, I seem to recall their last visitation in these pages many, many years ago had us all seductively cooed and frankly speechless in adoring admiration. It seems Perth’s finest have a new single out, ‘dore strauch’ be its name, lifted from their ‘Quarrels’ album which I’m suspecting we need to hear as soon as, this honey is pure pastoral kaleidoscopia. Woodwinds, glockenspiels and the ornate rustic reel of folk madrigals weave a sumptuously hypnotic haven of vintage village green follies by way of an ageless craft honeyed in a regal pepper-corning that could easily be a spell crafting Ozric Tentacles lassoed from their astral planes and moored to some lush green idyllic meadow whittling woodcuts with circulus and sproatly smith under the watchful proud eye of a certain Mr Oldfield.”
Continue reading →Apricot Rail – "Quarrels" Reviewed at Luna Kafe
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Let’s face the facts: fact #1: It’s taken Apricot Rail four years to put out their second album. Fact #2:Quarrels is a gorgeous album.
Apricot Rail is a multi-instrumental pop sextet based in Perth, and they take us with them on a pleasant journey visiting 12 songs of comforting vibes and soothing relaxation. It’s hard to explain or describe the beauty of Quarrels. You’d better take the listening trip yourself. The opening “Basket Press”, which is a single choice, sets the standard, along with single # 2 off this album “Surry Hills”, which I described at the time as ‘…a blooming, flowering track, almost like a glass of rich, red wine.. (Australian, of course).’ Sometimes you’ll find Twin Peakish moods, other times slightly (slightly) like Chicagoans such as Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, Jim O’Rourke and David Grubbs (when the latter two do melodic pop, not their impro-experimentalism). Imagine Explosions In The Sky without explosives, or Mogwai without noisy cascades. Even Bedhead springs to mind, even if its only within a song, or maybe part of a fragment. My point is; even though the bands and artists listed are somewhat different in style from Apricot Rail, they’re sort of related at a higher level; philosophically and mentally.
Like I said, you’d better check out Quarrels yourself. And, well, as a title ‘Quarrels’ might be somewhat misleading. There are no traces of anger or heated disputes present at all. With an album like this it’s hard, almost impossible to pick favourite tracks. Simply because they all are. That’s a fact. Fact #3.”
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– Luna KafeApricot Rail "Quarrels" Reviewed at Mess + Noise
“At the start of post-rock, Simon Reynolds coined the term to highlight the technical innovativeness of a particular set of bands and it worked. Music history doesn’t highlight this, but Slint’s Spiderland and Nirvana’s Nevermind were both released in 1991. One would become the mainstream archetype for rock music for the next five years, the other a touchstone for the underground response to alt-rock’s popularity. It sounds arcane and ridiculous, but there was a real sense of moving past rock there for a few years; with Nirvana and Melvins and Sonic Youth and Mudhoney and Helmet all on major labels, all in the popular mainstream, what more could there be left to build? For a brief moment, rock seemed like finished business. And then the whole thing collapsed and rock has pretty much been out of vogue ever since, which is where it belongs.
The curious postscript to all this is that ‘post-rock’ stuck around and became a genre of sorts: mostly or entirely instrumental music, played by a rock ensemble, lots of effects, often with some sort of classical instrumentation: a violin, a cello or, in Apricot Rail’s case, a flute and clarinet. It may not be popular or critically admired or cool, but it has its audience and a network. There are post-rock bands in every Australian city and, like folk music, they all sound a little alike. I find it fascinating because folk art usually exists to maintain a verbal/lyrical conversation, but what do these bands have to say to each other and the people who like them?
All this is a bit much to dump on Apricot Rail’s shoulders. The Perth six-piece lay out an extremely concise and textured second album with Quarrels, and for the most part it manages to evade many of my least favourite parts of post-rock. There are plenty of chiming harmonics and clean, delayed guitars, gently shifting arpeggios and a glockenspiel lead, but the band also sneak in a few surprises: the droned outro of ‘Cicadas Part Two’; the super intricate structure, almost sampled feel of ‘Third Balloon’; the weird electronics of ‘Eked’; and a dedication to shorter songs. The album was mixed by Scott Solter (Superchunk, The Mountain Goats) with a view to maximum headphone euphoria and the stereo spectrum is given a thorough workout, the band cutting in and out, left to right and back and forth. It comes off as beautiful and exacting, if a little cold. So exactly right then.
Apricot Rail – ‘Basket Press’ by Hidden Shoal Recordings
Dialling into Quarrels makes a lot of sense, especially if I look out the window at sunny suburbia. Apricot Rail share none of Mogwai’s metal or Euro-club/pub tendencies, nor much of Explosions in the Sky’s American bombast, and very few post-rock bands in recent years have tried on the literary expanses of Spiderland. Instead, this band inhabits a world similar to how I see Perth in my mind’s eye: a very pretty and bright city by the ocean, the sort of place anyone would desperately want to live if they hadn’t grown up there (and if mining money hadn’t made dinner for two an upper-middle-class expense).
It’s a tight fit between sound and place. I think bands like Apricot Rail are about approximating the pastoral splendour and the clean suburban streets of Australia, something that might be problematic if it weren’t so niche, and in any case it’s something many of us live within every day. In a rock culture obsessed with painting Australia as a swamp or southern-gothic wasteland or a retched sprawl of rundown sharehouses, how can a small measure of prettiness be such a crime?”
Continue reading →Apricot Rail "Quarrels" Reviewed at Textura
“I’m not exactly sure why but for whatever reason I mistakenly had Apricot Rail pegged as a hard-hitting guitar-driven outfit. That impression was quickly set right when I put on the Perth-based sextet’s sophomore outing Quarrels and was presented with the opening song “Basket Press,” a luscious instrumental that does feature guitars but does so primarily for the purposes of crafting a soothing mood. Yes, a heavier guitar-fueled attack does eventually surface, but not before Mayuka Juber’s flute appears to establish even more clearly the band’s multi-coloured identity. Apricot Rail helps distinguish its sound from the competition by prominently featuring woodwinds in its arrangements (bassist Daniel Burt also plays saxophone and Juber contributes clarinet as well as flute to the recording). As much pop group as post-rock outfit, the group also includes drummer Matt Saville and guitarists Ambrose Nock, Justin Manzano, and Jack Quirk, all of whom enrich the songs with bold splashes of colour (vocals, melodica, trumpet, electronics, and glockenspiel).
Largely recorded over a four-day spell during January 2012 in an isolated farmhouse in Western Australia, Quarrels offers a bounty of splendid songcraft and arrangements. The second piece, “Another Roof, Another Proof,” captures the band’s softer side and lightness of touch in beautiful manner, and again demonstrates the rich range of instrumental colour the sextet is capable of bringing to an arrangement. “Cicadas…Part Two” likewise spotlights the band’s softer side when a lovely waltz episode appears at the song’s center.
Folk melodies etched by electric guitar and voice (“Come to Glasgow, my darling / And we’re never coming home again”) lend “Running with an Egg on a Spoon” an appealingly rustic and nostalgic feel, and while I’ve not been to “Surry Hills,” based on the luscious setting evoked by the band, it’s definitely a place I’d welcome visiting, especially when wide open skies and soul-replenishing natural air are conjured so vividly by it. A brief foray into guitar raucousness notwithstanding (“The Sunlight Experiments”), Quarrels impresses as a twelve-song collection that makes a more-than-strong case for Apricot Rail’s particular blend of instrumental pop and post-rock.”
Continue reading →Apricot Rail "Quarrels" Reviewed by Think Muzik
“…I would almost hesitate to call this new release post-rock. Post-rock music in its purest form is highly processed and heavily distorted instrumental rock music that more often than not hints at a coming apocalypse. Apricot Rail has crafted an interesting release in instrumental music that eschews the heavy distortion for more organic instrumental melodies with just enough feedback to provide a sweeping atmospheric texture.
Vocals, while sparse, only serve to accentuate certain melodies without playing an integral part in the sound as a whole. This is immediately evident from the opening bars of the very first track. Another thing that stands out with this release is that this band is not afraid to experiment with lullaby-style electronic harmonies or unconventional instrumentation. More than one track includes strings and several feature full-on horn sections. This creates yet another interesting dynamic in the music. During Cicadas…Part II, a horn section almost had me convinced that I was listening to an odd rendering of The Beatles’ Strawberry Fields. This was a rather astute observation considering that I’m not a Beatles fan.
This album almost literally renders me speechless. It is that good. There is something in this music for everyone. I can’t find a single beef with the flow of this album. “Quarrels” is certainly an early candidate to make our year-end list. This is extremely impressive music from a relatively unknown band. The music beautiful and uplifting in ways that most post-rock fails or does not care to attempt. If you like instrumental music of any kind, you MUST check this out…”
Continue reading →Apricot Rail's "Quarrels" – Reviewed by Drum Media (Album of the Week)
“After almost four years, post-rock sextet Apricot Rail have put twelve more tracks to record. Fronted by Ambrose Nock, Rail’s eponymous debut back in 2008 hurled like a bolt into an explosion of acclaim; the afterglow of which gradually dimmed into an Apricot Rail pressure phosphene of support gigs and occasional recurrences on the Perth live circuit. But in the right-here-right-now, Quarrels is a stunning record; it is Rail’s abrupt and brilliant re-entry into the id of contemporary alternative music.
The album is largely instrumental, and breaking it down commits a fundamental error in prying Mayuka Juber’s woodwind from Jack Quirk’s glockenspiel and the unifying fabric of Nock’s guitar. Quarrel’s first single Surry Hills provides solid ground for an introduction to the record: although superficially indistinct from the album with its cascading arpeggio (a guitar with reverb perhaps, although digital production makes it all a guess), operating as part of a larger whole its place becomes clear. Ibis Snowstorm is concise but immaculate, at only 2:36, it’s a shorter track, but with the precision and subtlety of a mosquito-bite. Third Ballroom counterpoints Ibis, resulting in a rural, melancholic grandeur. Eked is gossamer and sparse as a paddock at 5am, Dore Strach is a spiralling, whirling conclusion.
Etherial and compelling are not adjectives applied to this record with the intention they’ll be bubble-wrapped alongside a styrofoam press release for Yet Another Up And Coming Band That Actually Isn’t: Quarrels envelopes the listener like a rain curtain, with Rail’s six individual parts contracting into a tourniquet with exactly the kind of apparent, balmy temperance that actually masks rigid and almost brilliant perfectionism. Simply and quietly, this is an incredible album.”
Continue reading →Apricot Rail's 'Basket Press' Single – Reviewed by Sunken Sounds
“Basket Press is the new single from Australian sextet Apricot Rail, preceding their latest album, “Quarrels” set to be released on 25th Feb on Hidden Shoal Recordings. It’s rare to find an instrumental band that are just this uplifting. As much as I will always love droney post-rock, Apricot Rail sweep in like a breath of fresh air, rustling through the countryside with leaves and flowers dancing in the breeze. Basket Press is the perfect antidote to a stressful day. Go lie down, get some headphones and imagine diving into a cool lake, or something. I’ve got a feeling “Quarrels” may become my first album of the year.”
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Artist Photos
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- Photo by Tom Cramond
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- Photo by Tom Cramond
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- Photo by Tom Cramond
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- Photo by Tom Cramond
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- Photo by Tom Cramond
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- Photo by Tom Cramond
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- Photo by Tom Cramond
Music Videos
Licensing
Apricot Rail’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.