A true quality imprint, Perth-based Hidden Shoal Recordings doesn’t release reams of material but rather important material. Four, five or six times a year, cultivating a small stable of artists who share an elective affinity rather than an easily-categorized style or genre.
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[Wes Willenbring :: Weapons Reference Manual] On his third album for the label, Wes Willenbring’s classic melancholy breaks no new ground but shows off an admirably stark personal vision and straightforward, coherent execution. The electric guitar is his weapon of preference though once, an acoustic ditto adds something of an Iberian flavour to otherwise uncharted terrain. ”Dreams and Schemes” is a saw-toothed fog, a trembling drone. “Scene Missing” is an attractive nothingness determined to achieve a state of enrapt somethingness. Pulsars travel through a rust belt on “Consequences of Recklessness,” corroding their bright, elongated rays. The longest piece is the shortest on ideas; at fifteen minutes, “Quaaludes” takes ages to get going, four notes banged out of the guitar which lead up to nothing much more than an empty, gaping hole in which to echo. Not that it isn´t pleasant, probably much more so if you are comfortably numb while listening, but it lacks the heft of all the other, much shorter tracks, which Willenbring endows with so much moxie. He closes with a gentle piano farewell. [Release page]
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[Markus Mehr :: On] This is the second installment in a trilogy slated for completion in January. While In opened with a fog lifting to reveal a romantic vista, On bursts out of the gate like a bolting horse pulling a cart with a broken back wheel. “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” is a promise to the listener Mehr intends to work hard to keep. Only two minutes long and bold and abrasive as it is, it´s immediately apparent that there is much more going on than first meets the ear, that the arrangement is full of delicate particulars behind the bashing. “Flaming Youth” deposits us in an easy-listening Bacharachian paradise, just as “Komo” did on In, while “Barcelona Waltz” obscures a really sweet song with thick curtains of static, only pulled aside once or twice. Mehr often returns to string orchestra samples to construct the lushest of his loops, and “Only for a While” is the loveliest of these. On the following track, Mehr casts lightening bolts of electricity, before more trumpet-led lounge music loops in and out of earshot. As the record heads toward its conclusion, the dust-up with Greek folk music is just annoying and I think we’ve all heard enough Gregorian chanting to last us a lifetime, even if this choir of monks is surrounded by happy-go-lucky beachgoers. The album too ends with a piano coda, whose blissful self-indulgence he can’t help but torture with occasional, and brutal, shocks. This reviewer found Mehr’s ambient-noise schizophrenia on In only partly successful. While On feels more symmetrical and logically integrated, it too requires the most engaged and open-minded listener to elicit unconditional love. [Release page]
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[Slow Dancing Society :: Laterna Magica] Slow Dancing Society, on the other hand, may be the most loveable of Hidden Shoals’ roster. Built around chiming, delayed guitars, Drew Sullivan´s music glows and radiates more wattage than most ambient. Sulllivan has a consistent, very personal address. His previous effort Under the Sodium Lights was one great big, dreamily seductive love letter. Lanterna Magica is an album of specific farewells, if the fact that half the ten tracks contain personal pronouns in their titles is any indication. It is light, almost Californian romance for “A Few Moments,” marred by the unfortunate idea of frankensteining a hermaphroditic spoken-word stanza at the very end. But that small flaw is easily outshone by magical moments like “Gardens and Graves” and “I’ll See You in Time,” wispy things that graze up against a kind of ambient folk. Unprepossessing, only waved at with effects, Sullivan’s Laterna Magica is far easier to embrace than the more challenging Mehr, but that doesn’t make it any less well-crafted. Although the label chose “I’ll Leave a Light On” as lead-in single, I would have gone with “A Slow Parade of Wind.” And even though it is an emotionally-based album, Sullivan takes time for a genuine think-piece with “There’s a Place for Us.” [Release page]
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All releases are available on Hidden Shoal.
