Blog: Hidden Shoal Recordings

Excerpt: "'Green Light District' is the new single by Perth band Umpire, according to their label Hidden Shoal they're 'widescreen indie-rock craftsmen'. True words. Craftsmen with a big heart... 'Green Light District' is very catchy and contagious, holding a good grip onto melancholia. It's a gracious song, sort of a perfect spring (well, early summer, Norwegian style) song. This is bliss-pop like from the days of the Chills and the Bats, Flying Nun early 1990s. Neat stuff!" Luna Kafe

Last October, Liam Singer performed at the first O+ Festival , a health and arts festival held in Kingston, New York, wherein artists barter their contributions directly for medical, dental, and other wellness services from art-loving health care providers. A book and compilation album has just been released, which features Liam's glorious single 'The Brief Encounter', track 2 on his latest opus Dislocatia . Visit the O+ Book and Compilation site to stream the compilation and purchase a copy. And, of course, if you don't own [...]

Umpire's fantastic debut album Now We're Active is now, er, 'active' at three of Melbourne's finest independent records stores: Polyester Records in Fitzroy, Missing Link in the City, and Greville Records in Prahran. So, if you like your music to come with a jewel case, a super cover to look at, plus a booklet with liner notes and full lyrics, you know where to go. Head on down, grab a copy, have a chat with the smashing staff, and support your local independent record store! (If you like [...]

As part of our 5th birthday celebrations, we've been looking back at the history of Hidden Shoal, casting some light on artists and releases that may have been overlooked. This week is the final post, bringing us bang up to date. For one week, a selection of releases covered below will be available from the Hidden Shoal Store with a 20% discount. Flavoursome! Back at the start of 2010 we released volume 5 in our free download compilation album series, Crushed and Reminded , rounding up a selection of tracks from [...]

Excerpt: " Now We're Active is both a testament to the band's faith in their own work and a smartly crafted collection of guitar songs which, while it won't win any awards for groundbreaking artistic imagination or surreally inspired experimentalism, is probably exactly what you might want to listen to when driving from the band's Australian hometown of Perth to anywhere else on the map... Umpire reveal themselves as a band whose imaginations are very far from limited by their mastery of the soft rock format they introduce themselves with... Now [...]

Umpire's superb debut album Now We're Active has just received an excellent review on music site DOA . Visit DOA to read the review in full, or visit Umpire's reviews archive to read an excerpt. Plus, five (count 'em) tracks from the album received airplay on BreakThru Radio this weekend. Visit BreakThru Radio to restream the show, which also features Australian artists Gotye, PVT and Midnight Juggernauts. Now We're Active was launched in Perth last weekend and is [...]

Excerpt: " The Licence To Interpret Dreams is an inspiring album centred in and around the cinematic ambient and modern classical fields that will surely appeal to fans of Max Richter, Johann Johannsson or Rudi Arapahoe's brilliant Echoes From One To Another . Piano plays the lead part with Hazeldine employing an array of string and brass instruments alongside it, with the likes of harpsichord, organ, cello and glockenspiel all making a distinctive mark occasionally with angelic choir singing, field recordings and narcotic spoken word segments added in tandem to great [...]

The Licence to Interpret Dreams by Antonymes has just received wonderful reviews at instrumental music site The Silent Ballet and music blog Phantom Channel . Visit the sites to read the reviews in full, or visit Antonymes' reviews archive for lovingly edited excerpts from these and other reviews. The Licence to Interpret Dreams is available from the HSR Store .

Excerpt: " The Licence To Interpret Dreams is a captivating yet lethargic album, slowly layering simple parts as a means of carrying the listener along, creating a hazy and ambiguous sense of place, dreamlike in its contours... Rich with imagery from the song titles and the striking album art, Antonymes' work still manages to convey a sense of vagueness and ambiguity, making the references to dreams carry more weight. A dreamlike logic, or better, perhaps, a counterlogic, guides the trajectory of the album... Hazeldine is certainly a thoughtful craftsman, and he [...]

Ever-wonderful blog The Underground of Happiness , home to the musings of Conor, the presenter of the Cork radio show of the same name, has recently featured an article about our 5th birthday celebrations . Conor chats about some of his favourite HSR releases, provides links to recent interviews with Antonymes and Hotels from his show, and generally says nice things about us. Thanks Conor! We love you too!

Excerpt [translated]: " Noises, voices and fragments of sound collected in remote and abandoned areas are Hazeldine's substrate around which he built his first album... As already revealed by its evocative title, The Licence To Interpret Dreams is more than an album; it is a dream narrative based on the themes of nostalgia, divided into twelve episodes... in spite of references to dreams, the atmosphere of the album is anything but languid and dreamy, but rather marked by very deep alienation, in which [...]

Excerpt: "It's the lingering of sounds that interests Ian M. Hazeldine. Each note is a point of noise that decays over time, sharp at first, then aging, dissolving and becoming inaudible. These musical representatives of physical piano keys die humbly like waves on a beach, though the keys themselves—located somewhere in North Wales, snug under the lid of his instrument—remain rectangular and solid. Here we have cello and violin, a church-organ keyboard in "The Gospel Pass", a few intrusive vocal samples and ongoing electronic manipulation. Winds hiss. Strings are made to reverberate and surge. He isn't the first musician [...]

Excerpt: "Iretsu are a band that sound like no other, with a theatrical bent that underpins their clever math-pop + anything goes style. They're a band with boundless energy, to the point where you don't quite know what to expect. It seems there's always something new on the horizon when this Portland, Oregon quartet is around. It's as if they have tapped into a 4th dimension of pop, one which us mere mortals cannot see. 'Sexy, No?' is their new (free download) single, lifted from last year's excellent 'Fang' LP and released by the consistently great Australian imprint Hidden Shoal (more [...]

Next Friday, 10 June, Rich Bennett & Cosmic Country Noir will be playing at Vaudeville Park, Brooklyn, supported by Hot & Cold. Promising "nostalgic installation art and seductively emotional music", it's gonna be a superb night of multimedia luxuriance, so head on down if you're in NYC. Rich's most recent mini-album, Buddy Cop , is available for free download from the Hidden Shoal Store , along with his previous solo releases On Holiday and Music For Underwater Supermarkets , [...]

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 [...]

Hidden Shoal Recordings is proud to announce the Australian release of debut album Now We're Active by Perth's widescreen indie-rock craftsmen Umpire ahead of its international release on July 14th. On Now We're Active , Umpire combine sprawling indie-rock sounds with reflective melancholy, expertly wielding massive sun-drenched melodies, serpentine guitar parts and soaring vocals to spectacular effect. From lead single 'Green Light District' through the chiming guitar surge of 'The Canyon' to gorgeous finale 'Cyclones Into Sunshowers', Now We're Active is a stunning release, as expansive [...]

For anyone lucky enough to be in Perth this Saturday night, head on down to the Rosemount Hotel in North Perth for the launch of Umpire's stupendous debut album Now We're Active , which is now streaming in its entirety on Bandcamp . Tomorrow sees the Australian CD release and international digital release, with the international CD release to follow on 14 July. Visit the HSR Store to snap up some of the action. In further Umpire news, Now We're Active is feature album all this week on the Breakfast with [...]

Day 10 and finally we arrive at the end of Umpire 's brilliant and imminent full length Now We're Active . I could squander words describing track 10 but it's title sums it up better than I ever could. Without further ado we introduce to you the absolutely stunning album closer, 'Cyclones Into Sunshowers'. You can follow the link below to grab the track and embed it on your Facebook page, website, wherever. Even better the album is out tomorrow (June 2) on CD in Australia and digitally everywhere! Cyclones Into Sunshowers [...]

Another awesome write up at the superfine German blog Der Digitale Flaneur . This time for Umpire's ' Green Light District ' single. You'll have to do some Google translating if you're not a German speaker but trust us, its worth it!

Hot on the heels of the KZSU chart news , we now find Antonymes and Slow Dancing Society charting very strongly over at the wonderful WNYU . Antonymes The Licence To Interpret Dreams is sitting pretty at number 12 on the top 30 chart and the reissue of Slow Dancing Society's The Sound of Lights When Dim is holding down the number 17 spot on the same chart!