For those of you in the area, and those who aren’t, get down to the Beaufort Street Festival (Perth, Western Australia for you international types) this Saturday (27th of Nov) and catch Chris Mason and Miriam Braun of My Majestic Star playing some acoustic tunes on the Mary Street stage from 11:30AM. Should be a fantastic day all round with lots happening. Check out all the info at www.beaufortstreetfestival.com.au.

My Majestic Star – City Sleeps My Majestic Star – City Sleeps

Hidden Shoal Recordings is excited to announce the release of the third album Europa by German minimal electronica maestro Jumpel. Inspired by Jo Dürbeck’s travels around Europe, Europa transforms Dürbeck’s personal memories of 11 different European locations into a gorgeous suite of minimal ambient electronica. The album acts as a kind of abstracted sonic diary, painting the intangibilities and romanticism of memory and travel using sparse yet resonant sound. A simple idea – and one that has produced Jumpel’s most restrained and unified effort to date.

The album includes the stunning freely downloadable single ‘Edinburgh‘ featuring the exquisite guest vocals of Chloë March married to Jumpel’s inimitable melancholic ambient pop. ‘Edinburgh’ is an exercise in elegance and restraint, filling out the shadows and backstreets with ennui.

“ambient-dub set-pieces of understated yet still resplendent colour… an album of many moods, with dub, dub-techno, ambient, electro-pop, and funk all making appearances…  A spirit of languor and ease pervades the album as a whole, rendering it a scenic yet still relaxing travelogue.” – Textura on sophomore album Deuxieme Bureau

“A beautiful, minimal electronic record for the heads… enthusiasts of minimal electronic music will find much to enjoy with Jumpel’s new album and its wide sound palate” – Sonic Frontiers on debut album Samuel Jason Lies On The Beach

Europa is available now on CD and in digital formats through Hidden Shoal Recordings, distributed via n5Mailorder. Head to the Hidden Shoal Store for all availability details and read a full press release here. Also download the albums first single ‘Edinburgh‘ and watch its accompanying music video at Youtube or Vimeo.

Jumpel – Rom Jumpel – Rom

Ahead of its release next week (2nd Dec), Toby Richardson’s awesome new EP The Stones And The Rabbits is now available for pre-order from our beautiful friends at n5mailorder. Even better, if you pre-order the CD you get an immediate mp3 download of the album.

Head to n5mailorder and soak in the wonderfully skewed and wildly addictive indie rock that is The Stones And The Rabbits.

Toby Richardson – The Stones And The Rabbits Toby Richardson – The Stones And The Rabbits

More video magic for Boxharp as filmmakers Mark Solter and Laura Solter team up for another beautiful video accompaniment to a track from Boxharp’s Loam Arcane EP. This time around its the dizzying astral acid electronic pop that is ‘FanFin’ that gets the Solter + Solter visual treatment. Mark Solter (brother of Boxharp’s Scott Solter) also created the recently released music video for Boxharp’s ‘Rainbirds‘ .

The hallucinogenic pop of  ‘FanFin’ ricochets with disorientating beats and refracted vocal melodies as if some sort of life-sized zoetrope. The track showcases Wendy Allen’s stunningly transcendent vocals and Scott Solter’s continually inventive and visceral production. Mark and Laura Solter have perfectly matched the skittering cuts and turns of the sonics, with the visuals echoing ‘Fanfin’s’ hyper schizo honeyed pop.

For the uninitiated, Boxharp recently featured in a January 2010 article in British newspaper The Guardian as one of David Bowie’s current favourite artists, and promptly received a full-page feature on Bowie’s official website. Vocalist Wendy Allen has played and toured with several bands since the start of the decade, including The Court and Spark, Tarantel, Paula Frazer (of Tarnation), William Lazarus, and Howard Hello, as well as writing film scores for small indie film projects. She is a member of The Balustrade Ensemble. As a producer, recordist and mixer, Solter has worked with numerous indie artists, recently producing the much lauded Majesty Shredding by Superchunk, Liam Singer’s latest opus Dislocatia and even slipping in a Neon Indian remix amongst other things.

Check out the video on Youtube and Vimeo. ‘FanFin’ is taken from the Loam Arcane EP available now through Hidden Shoal along with Boxharp’s latest full length, The Green. Availability details at the Hidden Shoal Store. Read more about Boxharp at the Hidden Shoal label site.

Boxharp – FanFin Boxharp – FanFin