Hidden Shoal sent me this single with a note: ‘Good, hey?’ Masters of understatement. This squelching, ‘technicolour art-rock’ ditty has a mess of electronic noise in the foreground and a soul-lifting emotional undertone, reminiscent of Animal Collective but rougher and more spacious. It is jarring and ambitious and also kind of brilliant – epic, spine-tingling, innovative music. Wizards Of Time hail from Phoenix, Arizona and release their debut Will The Soft Curse Plague On? this coming July.

Beat magazine’s Single of the Week

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Excerpt: “from the very first seconds of the song’s opening riff I’m all hooked. ‘Little’s Jingle’ is simply amazing and mind-blowing stuff. My first thoughts are: this sounds like Grizzly Bear meets MGMT meets Deerhunter. Which is a good thing. A fuzzed guitar riff kick-starts the song, while a bubbling, uh, ‘glockenspiel-piano’ introduces singer Andrew Hiller, who’s adding spirited vocals to a truly colourful song… I was immediately hooked. The song grabbed me, and didn’t let me go. I play it over again, same thing happens every time. It grabs, and holds. Check for yourself. This track is lifted from their forthcoming debut album, Will The Soft Curse Plague On? (due out on Hidden Shoal in June). Oh, yeah, I’m really excited to hear the album. The Wizards of Time are true wizards and gifted magicians when it comes to creating this magical mystery musical tour… highly addictive.”

Luna Kafe

Original Article

The name Todd Tobias probably isn’t a name familiar to you unless you are a very keen fan of prolific Indie mavericks Guided By Voices. Since 2002, when he produced GBV’s Universal Truths And Cycles album Tobias has assisted the band in pursuing their single mindedly idiosyncratic visions, and while they perhaps exist on the boundaries of obscurity GBV have, over the years, made some very listenable music. I need to declare an interest of sorts here: almost nine years ago I heard “Cheyenne”, the single released from the Universal Truths And Cycles album and few tracks I’ve ever heard affected me quite as profoundly as that particular song did right then, with its nerve jangling guitar riff and Robert Pollards eloquently tortured vocal. As soon as I found out who the band were and where the song had originated from I immediately rushed to my nearest megastore and demanded a copy of what was, had anyone asked me, album of the year 2003.

So when I received the press release for Medicine Show I will admit to feeling slightly nostalgic in recalling an overcast Sunday evening all of nine years ago when one of the greatest guitar riffs I ever heard crackled out of a now long lost analogue radio, bringing with it an air of medium wave mystery and introducing me to the work of some of the US indie world’s quite genuine mavericks. Just one of those moments, but only certain bands can really create those moments, and now in 2012, the producer of Universal Truths… and everything GBV has done since – Todd Tobias – presents us with an album of instrumentals that are as disturbingly captivating and downright twisted as anything Guided By Voices ever released.

A theme of sorts runs through Medicine Show: there is, according to my interpretation of the track titles, a story to tell, involving characters with names such as Clubfoot and Manatoc whose shadowy confrontations are left to the listeners imagination, and Todd Tobias provides more than ample musical backdrop to the images of primitive technologies that the track titles convey. Starting with “Night Of The Clubfoot” Tobias presents us some of the trademark twisted chord changes that anyone familiar with GBV will recognise instantly while the instrumentation holds the subtlest hints of foreboding and hidden challenge. Next track “Manatoc Is Born”, a sequence of keyboard glissandos that are suddenly broken apart by some thunderous effects that go some way towards conjuring a very different world to the one most of us inhabit, a pre-human wilderness of shambling creatures living lives of remorseless brutality. If this is starting to make Medicine Show resemble the soundtrack of some xBox dinosaur game then take it from me, it’d make for a good one if that was ever released. As the album progresses the music reveals a constantly building tension that can only end in some catastrophe or other, and track titles such as “Pre-Dawn Visitation” and “Shadows With Teeth” really do start to resemble the chapters of a fantasy novel.

If I’ve any actual criticism it’s that the album really could use some acoustic instrumentation to bring some added contrasts to Tobias’s almost entirely electronic soundscapes. Call an album Medicine Show and some music buffs might expect something very different to this 15 track exercise in edgy atmospherics and controlled noise, but it’s tribute to Todd Tobias’s skill as a producer and arranger that the pace never slackens and that he’s quite effectively produced the audio equivalent of a graphic novel, one that will keep you listening right up until its cataclysmic final moments.

Delusions of Adequacy

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Thankfully, San Franciscan ambient musician Wes Willenbring doesn’t produce the kind of limply ethereal sounds you once meditated to that time you were trying to be more spiritual. On this, his third release, Willenbring wrests his raw guitar work together with distorting effects and chilling piano to create a record that’s more ‘layered aural dreamscape’ than ‘soundtrack to Ikea catalogue’. Tracks like ‘People Disappear Everyday’ wax and wane, with deeply immersive silences and striking instrumental work that jolts you back to consciousness. Short, achingly melancholic numbers pepper the highlight tracks. Most are just long enough to lose yourself in, although Quaaludes presents 15 minutes of humming guitar, melting uneasily into a hypnotic composition of warped effects. These soundscapes are tightly constructed yet fluid enough that Weapons Resource Manual feels like a choose-your-own-adventure record; there’s undeniable emotion behind the dramatic scores and haunting static interludes, but what it evokes is up to you.

Rave magazine 

Original Article

In February 2007, Hidden Shoal Recordings introduced Bay Area recording artist Wes Willenbring. His debut was named Somewhere Someone Else, and was greeted with that particular brand of scattered enthusiasm unique to an obscure release, including a Headphone Commute review stating, “Modern classical hasn’t felt this young in years!” The album certainly had its moments, between the slanting and morose piano scribbling of “Aperture” and the pulsing, insistent “In A Quiet Dark Room.” (The track “As You Fade Away” was featured in a recent episode of Skins).

Willenbring’s sophomore release was Close But Not Too Close (October 2009), and received more widespread acclaim. The composer’s years of piano instruction and technical chops were much more evident here, in the plainly-titled “My Ghostly Fingers” and the loose-stringed “A Half-Hearted Apology.” Hypnagogue wrote, “There’s nothing here that isn’t absolutely inherent, nothing wedged or crammed in where it doesn’t belong.” By May of the following year, Willenbring indulged Fluid readers with an excellent Mixcloud collection, including tracks by Six Organs of Admittance, Vincent Gallo and William Basinksi, among the more standard fare. A subsequent Future Sequence interview revealed him to be a film, literature, and baseball aficionado. He prefers guitar and piano over synthesizer, the latter of which tends toward lateral exploration, but not necessarily much forward progress.

So he has our attention, and the third album — named Weapons Reference Manual — is set for an April 12 pre-order.

Two cuts stand out immediately: the advance track “Consequences of Recklessness,” and the 15-minute, three-act drone presentation “Quaaludes.” The former hints at dulcimer prowess, warm, possibly eastern drone hardware, even the hoarse call of a wind instrument, although all three of the sound elements are likely guitar. Willenbring reports that his compositions begin with melody, and the ethic shows here: a three-note siren heard through the distance of processing. “Quaaludes” opens with a bow to the narcotic idealism of early hard rock: a sludgy, distorted guitar, minimal and dissonant, with cavernous echoes. The repetition becomes entrancing, if not downright obsessive-compulsive. The first ten minutes go by quickly: the accumulation of feedback is unrushed, even exhilarating, if on a more rational level. And at the moment where the reiteration becomes too much, the tumultuous sleep begins dissolving into light. Or overdose, depending on how you interpret the narrative.

It is difficult to pick a favorite out of Willenbring’s catalog: the vastness of Somewhere Someone Else, the intricacies of Close But Not Too Close, or the meeting of both that he offers with Weapons Reference Manual. The Andalusian guitar and light manufacturing rumble of “People Disappear Every Day” favors Close, while the slowly rousing, crystalline guitars and telegraphed production of “Scene Missing” more favors Somewhere. There is a lot to like about the smeared ink, low-throttle guitar distortion and shimmering, time-lapse sustain of Weapons, but more than this, it is an invitation to get to know his discography as a whole.

Fluid Radio 

Original Article

“In, the new release by Augsburg, Germany’s Markus Mehr, is the artist’s second full length offering from Aussie label Hidden Shoal Recordings and the first in a three-part series – a musical triptych – due to be released over the course of the next year. In this sense, In is both a piece and a part, and succeeds completely in both respects. Comprised of two long-form soundscapes, In not only stands by itself as a remarkably well crafted piece of ambience, but simultaneously sets the stage for deeper, quite likely darker, things to come.

Other reviews have made mention of the length of the pieces, with the tracks ‘Komo’ and ‘Ostinato’ running roughly 26 and 24 minutes, respectively. Of course, in the ambient world that’s not really unusual. Instead, what stands out about In is not so much the length of the pieces as their depth. There’s something about the music that is not completely linear, as though the movement from the first droning pulse to the final burst of distortion is less significant than the studied exposition of each theme and texture. This strikes me as entirely in keeping with the title of the release. As a listener it becomes impossible to stand passively by – we instead become gradually situated ‘in’ the music. And like the anthropologist whose very presence compromises objective observation, the effect is one of seeing both too much and too little, of getting more than one asked for and being poorer for it. It is this immersive experience that makes In both a challenge and a revelation, an accomplishment which speaks powerfully of Mr. Mehr’s daring and engagement with his audience.

With regard to the tunes themselves, as stated above these are compositions of minutely detailed, classic ambience. Both pieces are reminiscient of Frippertronic soundscaping, with looping motifs receiving various treatments, disruptions and distortions. Yet where soundscapes tend to meander across some vague sonic landscape, the music of In drills down and takes root. String pad phrases are developed with patience and care, only to be intermittently interrupted and finally overcome by staccato bursts of heavy distortion. Spoken word, guitar and piano samples are employed to excellent effect, breaking up the deliberate rhythms of the music and injecting significant tension into otherwise patient grooves. Ultimately, whereas both ‘Komo’ and ‘Ostinato’ employ repetition to a degree beyond the average soundscape, they are also more musically complete and resonate with their creator’s intent. Mr. Mehr clearly has a point to make, and after several listens, I could probably be forgiven for interpreting the whole release as a reflection on entropy and the seemingly inevitable trend of mechanization within human interaction.

Unlike most of the other releases reviewed here, In is not a free download and can be purchased from the Hidden Shoal Recordings website. Yet however much I like to focus on Creative Commons releases, I believe In is worth an exception as one of the best releases so far this year and one which will absolutely be appreciated by fans of abstract ambient music and soundscapes. I look forward to hearing more from Markus Mehr and eagerly anticipate the forthcoming releases in the triptych.”

Petal

Original Article

The first of a trilogy of albums to come from German ambient experimentalist Markus Mehr over the next 12 months (via Hidden Shoal Recordings), In, despite its 50-minute running time houses only two tracks.

Opener ‘Komo’ begins as a vast, uncluttered soundscape consisting primarily of several looping string sections which emerge and entwine. From around half-way, less organic elements begin to creep in, by way of thick chords of near-pure distortion and skidding beats. The final element to be introduced is a sample of a Terence McKenna quote, which repeats as the track becomes increasingly more industrial in nature, the periods of distortion coming more frequently and with greater intensity before overtaking the track almost entirely.

‘Ostinato’, by comparison, begins with the string loops already distorted and a deep undercurrent of brooding electronic fuzz. Immediately darker, a recurring piano refrain and deep cello line emerge as dominant themes; but from beneath come a range of smaller elements – snippets of music-box chimes, a recurring trumpet solo and glitchy electronic pastiches. These lesser components contribute to an air of impermanence, even decay; like snatches of memory or glimpses of distant prosperity in a foreboding sonic wilderness.

Despite the unshakable ‘man-made’ feel of In, the progression of both tracks – and the album as a whole – feels surprisingly natural. Unforced, entropic even; the sheer scale at play is huge and Mehr manages to traverse it with barely a ripple. The knowledge that this is merely a third of what he has planned makes it all the more compelling.”

Reviewed Music

Original Article