Hidden Shoal Recordings » City of Satellites Reviews

City of Satellites ‘BMX [Video]‘ – The Frontloader

Jamie — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 15:00:09 +0000

Excerpt: “I’ve often found that the best time to appreciate music is late at night, after a long day of hustle and bustle. For some reason, my brain is usually at it’s most peaceful state in the late hours, and I’ve found that I’m more accepting and open to new music…. This track was the perfect backdrop to the night… it just seemed to float out from my iTunes and carry me to complete relaxation. “BMX” was synth-laden, atmosphere-inducing, and came across just as their label, Hidden Shoal Recordings, described it: sublime…. The music video for the song was directed by Dael Oates of Mothership/Digital Domain (Tron Legacy, Benjamin Button, Pirates of The Caribbean). It’s truly a sight to see: “BMX” is off their latest album, Machine is My Animal.”

The Frontloader

City of Satellites ‘BMX’ [Video] – Underground of Happiness

Jamie — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 14:34:03 +0000

Excerpt: “I like to think of this tune as an exercise in the sublime, with its gorgeous shoegazey shimmer (if all exercise was like this, obesity would be a forgotten dream in the pre-formed brain of an unborn child.) From the Australian duo’s engrossing album of last year, Machine is my animal, which is equally deserving of your attention.”

Underground of Happiness

City of Satellites [BMX] – Beehive Candy

Jamie — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 01:49:28 +0000

Excerpt: “Another band new to Beehive Candy and reminding us of the Cocteau Twins in a very positive way, that said they are definitive in their own right City Of Satellites have a considerable amount to offer. The sublime opening track from their debut album Machine Is My Animal, ‘BMX’ unfolds in a magisterial swirl of synths and hovering atmospherics, driven by Thomas Diakomichalis’ propulsive, detailed drumming and Jarrod Manuel’s pure vocal tones. Part misty paean to lost youth, part anthem for a better future, ‘BMX’ is premium 21st-century pop.”

Beehive Candy

New City of Satellites Single and Music Video

Hidden Shoal Recordings — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 07:18:40 +0000

Hidden Shoal Recordings today announced the release of new single ‘BMX’ by Australian dream-pop outfit City of Satellites and its stunning accompanying video, directed by Dael Oates of Mothership/Digital Domain (Tron Legacy, Benjamin Button, Pirates of The Caribbean).

The sublime opening track from their debut album Machine Is My Animal, ‘BMX’ unfolds in a magisterial swirl of synths and hovering atmospherics, driven by Thomas Diakomichalis’ propulsive, detailed drumming and Jarrod Manuel’s pure vocal tones. Part misty paean to lost youth, part anthem for a better future, ‘BMX’ is premium 21st-century pop.

The sumptuous hypnotic sci-fi visuals of the accompanying video distill the haunting, angelic feeling of the song, drawing from its ethereal lyrical plays. A group of lost space invaders is drawn towards a gleaming orb in a forest, while a BMX rider (champion German BMX wizard Michael Steingraeber) is becoming unified with light in an abandoned warehouse. Award winning Australian director and visual effects artist Dael Oates has created an absolute visual feast with this music video.

“One of the most unabashedly shoegaze-y albums in recent memory… City Of Satellites’ Jarrod Manual and Thomas Diakomichalis have tuned their ears to the expansive dream-pop of the classic 4AD roster and the likeminded M83, relishing the elastic reach of spidery rhythms and unmoored melodies… There’s an almost austere sheen to Machine Is My Animal, such that we’re never bombarded but gently seduced and swayed. It’s a beautiful feeling.” – Cyclic Defrost

The ‘BMX’ single is available for free download from the Hidden Shoal Store and the music video can be streamed and embedded via Youtube or Vimeo. Album Machine Is My Animal is available worldwide in CD and digital formats through Hidden Shoal Recordings. Check out the Hidden Shoal Store for all availability details and read a full press release here.

City of Satellites – BMX City of Satellites – BMX

City of Satellites ‘Machine Is My Animal’ – Sputnik

Jamie — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 08:50:21 +0000

Excerpt: “If we all looked into every subterranean up-and-comer that sounds like our favourite bands, the wishlist would be a mile long. There is a tonne of good music being made that we sadly miss every year, but it is impossible to get everything. That being said, if you’re a fan of Cocteau Twins or Goldfrapp, there is a really good album that you have to hear…. this album is gorgeous. “Machine Is My Animal” slides between your auditory legs so easily and gives you waves of smoky dream-pop sensuality. Bordering on a tag of heavy spacey Shoegaze and the hot blissed-out sound of Electronic Pop, this Australian duo has shown some impressive talent…. the potential is there, the sound is refined, the songwriting is clever (did I mention Stranger than Fiction), all City of Satellites have to do is put it all together and flip out a few similar standard discs and there can be success in this city.

Sputnik

City of Satellites ‘Machine Is My Animal’ – Cyclic Defrost

Jamie — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 02:18:41 +0000

Excerpt: “One of the most unabashedly shoegaze-y albums in recent memory… City Of Satellites’ Jarrod Manual and Thomas Diakomichalis have tuned their ears to the expansive dream-pop of the classic 4AD roster and the likeminded M83, relishing the elastic reach of spidery rhythms and unmoored melodies… There’s an almost austere sheen to Machine Is My Animal, such that we’re never bombarded but gently seduced and swayed. It’s a beautiful feeling.”

Cyclic Defrost

City Of Satellites ‘Machine Is My Animal’ – Textura

Jamie — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:54:49 +0000

Excerpt: “What elevates City Of Satellites’ dream pop above others’ takes on the style is the urgency driving the nine songs on Machine Is My Animal, the group’s follow-up to its debut EP The Spook… Though the group includes only two members, Adelaide resident Jarrod Manuel (vocals, guitars, synthesizers) and Sydney-based Thomas Diakomichalis (drums, synthesizers, programming), Machine Is My Animal nevertheless comes off sounding like songs played by a live band… Listening to the album, it quickly becomes clear that shoegaze is an obvious wellspring for the group, but one also hears traces of both ’80s synth-pop (OMD, for example) and New Wave in City Of Satellites’ pristine, analogue sound.”

Textura

City of Satellites ‘Machine Is My Animal’ – Delusions of Adequacy

Jamie — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 21:53:48 +0000

Excerpt: “On first listen, the 9 tracks play like one long trip through a colorful cosmic cloud with a dreamy, mysterious flow and a lush underbelly of celestial sounds. But over time, the songs distinguish themselves with swirling layers of enveloping orchestral harmonies and shooting stars of guitar bursts and cymbal crashes that add brilliant flairs of vaporous and heavenly ambience.”

Adequacy

City of Satellites ‘Machine Is My Animal’ – The Band Next Door

Jamie — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:54:09 +0000

Excerpt: “City of Satellites creates pleasant, nostalgic and shoe-gaze derived pop that is like a mid-afternoon reverie… the album is a grower and sneaks up quietly on the listener, channelling the 1980s in a manner reminiscent of M83’s most recent work. Unlike M83, City of Satellites adopts an aesthetic that is more 4AD and less John Hughes, as evidenced by the album’s cover.”

The Band Next Door

City of Satellites ‘Machine Is My Animal’ – Drum Media

Jamie — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:52:27 +0000

Excerpt: “City of Satellites have crafted an album filled with dense space and fueled by vintage synthesizers and melodically rich vocals…. the production values on the record rival that of heavyweights M83 and Aphex Twin.”

Drum Media

City of Satellites ‘Machine Is My Animal’ – [sic] Magazine

Jamie — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:51:00 +0000

Excerpt: “This is the 21st Century – ten years in. Except City Of Satellites don’t inhabit our today. They inhabit the 21st Century we foresaw back in the past – all robotics, ray-guns and flying machines. The Tomorrow’s World of our youth. Or maybe there are parallel universes? Maybe somewhere, in an alternate reality, Vince Clarke left Depeche Mode by falling through a wormhole into a Sky Captain meets Farscape Universe and formed Yazoo with the alien creature he met there.”

[sic] Magazine

City of Satellites ‘Machine Is My Animal’ – Luna Kafe

Jamie — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:49:33 +0000

Excerpt: “It is difficult to know exactly how the physical distance between the two band members has influenced Machine Is My Animal. But I would think it is plausible to say that it is responsible for some of the distant emotion that is so very present in most of the tracks on this pretty shoegazing, electronic pop album. Machine Is My Animal moves in a retro sci-fi, synth-shaped soundscape, from the opener ‘BMX’ with it’s dreamy flirt with 80s, through the laid-back close-to-post-rock pieces ‘Victor! Burn City Lights’ and ‘Willje Sleep’ to the closing with the ethereal ‘Sky Rider’.”

Luna Kafe

City of Satellites “Machine is My Animal” – Leonard’s Lair

Thea Porter — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:58:25 +0000

Excerpt: “City Of Satellites [create] deeply emotional music with a keen sense of space and dynamics… ‘BMX’ demostrates the sum of their disparate components perfectly; crisp percussion, Manuel’s lemon-fresh vocals and glorious synth melodies are at the heart of everything they do. ‘Victor! Burn City Lights’ even begins with two and a half minutes without vocals but it’s varying pace and rhythms always keeps the listener interested. Meanwhile, the title track features glistening guitar lines and seems engulfed in a deliciously attractive feeling of sadness.”

Leonard’s Lair

City of Satellites “Machine is My Animal” – Rave Magazine

Thea Porter — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:57:52 +0000

Excerpt: “City of Satellites venture beyond the troposphere on their debut CD Machine Is My Animal. Hazy, ethereal vocals and magisterial synth soundscapes wrap the sensors like rich ice cream upon pressing play…multi-tracked vocals are angelic for the lack of a better description. Closing with the levitating Sky Rider, the album radiates glacial atmospherics.”

Rave Magazine

City of Satellites ‘Stranger Than Fiction’ – Losing Today

Hidden Shoal Recordings — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:50:38 +0000

“The City of Satellites ’stranger than fiction’ (hidden shoal). Last venturing these pages way back at missive 181 wherein we were sent to swoon heaven courtesy of the silken electro retro sounds found on their sumptuous three track ’the spook’ EP debut. The duo – Jarrod and Thomas – have spent the intervening year busily sculpturing an album which now completed is proudly lined up on the shelf awaiting release at the tail end of next month. The album entitled ’machine is my animal’ continues their odyssey into the realms of dream pop, ’stranger than fiction’ culled from that set to serve as a taster is equipped with hulking ice tipped chorus’ of synth chime serenades that cast out a colourfully vibrant swirling haze that’s both as demurring as it is intoxicating all the time regaling within a disarming shy eyed aspect brought to the fore by Jarrod’s softly caressing feminine like vocals and arrested by the uplifting backdrops of starry eyed dream weaves – one we suspect for admirers of OMD’s ’Souvenir’.”

Losing Today

City Of Satellites “The Spook” EP – Luckybuster

tim — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 04:48:39 +0000

Excerpt: “This washes over you in a slight nod to post-rock. Yet as the song goes on, the vocals give ‘Sleeping Disgrace’ that slight whispy edge that slightly gets it away from that genre. Even later still the synth kicks in too then really get away from those ideas. It’s akin to something delicate yet sweeping the listener away at the same time.”

Luckybuster

City Of Satellites “The Spook” – Cyclic Defrost

tim — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:44:49 +0000

Excerpt: “a form of dreamlike pop with darker undertones, it holds all the hallmarks of well-wrought emotive post-rock landscapes. City Of Satellites can at times have a sense of the romantic and melodramatic about its effect and styling but the arena for these emotions is part of the attraction.”

Cyclic Defrost

City Of Satellites “The Spook” – Drum Media Sydney

tim — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:42:30 +0000

“Dim the lights, light the incense, pour yourself a glass of white wine and allow yourself to float away as this duo – a singer, guitarist and synth player from Adelaide, a drummer, programmer and synth player from Sydney – takes you on a languorous cruise through some downbeat, moonlit, stonergaze place inside your mind. There’s no hurry, just three contemplative tunes, with the shortest clocking in at just less than seven and a half minutes. Jarrod Manuel’s brief, whispered, abstract vocal passages work here more like bridges between adjoining sound/dreamscapes.”

Drum Media Sydney

City Of Satellites “The Spook” – Drum Media Perth

tim — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 05:38:15 +0000

Single Of The Week: “You know when you catch a faint smell of something that totally spins you out and reminds you of something you haven’t though about since you were six, completely changing your day? City Of Satellites have synthesised this feeling into music. The Adelaide/Sydney duo’s debut EP plays out like a strange adventure through an exotic foreign city – without the implied pretentiousness. Opening track ‘Moon In The Sea’ carries faint traces of shoegaze heroes M83 and My Bloody Valentine, with faint, androgynous vocals drifting in and out of clarity over a dreamy soundscape. Though only three (long) tracks in length, The Spook is an emotionally exhausting and incredibly satisfying little trip.”

Drum Media Perth

City Of Satellites “The Spook” – Leonard’s Lair

tim — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:49:53 +0000

Excerpt: “a richly-layered debut to unite the worlds of dreampop and ambient rock… commendable depth, emotion and high production values… the EP’s title track shoots off into space with a gorgeous arrangement of uplifting guitars and effects. It’s the track which most openly reveals their shoegazing influences but it’s also a song that seeks to embrace the future rather than churn up the past. Although they are clearly a band with their own sound, the nearest comparison I can think of is Breathless. Like that British band, City Of Satellites create meticulously-constructed songs of mystery and drama and this is a brilliant start to their career.”

Leonard’s Lair

City Of Satellites “The Spook” – Losing Today

tim — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 04:13:38 +0000

Excerpt: “City Of Satellites craft out beautifully mellowing starry-eyed dream-weaving post-rock sculptures that are delicately dimpled with shoegaze and mid-’80s goth/4AD-styled dialects and lushly tendered with sweetly amorphous ambient trance lines. Opening cut ‘Moon In The Sea’ is particularly sugared so, sounding at times like a distant cousin of Ecstasy of Saint Theresa being cosmically fused with Tin Drum-era Japan… ‘Sleeping Disgrace’ tweaks on the heart strings a little firmer, introspective and bruised… it’s the parting cut that seals the set. Maybe it’s the dry-iced cinematic tethered cavernous swathes that endow ‘The Spook’ with its lush defence-surrendering sensibilities, all at once expansive and celestial, majestic and statuesque, that to these ears evoke some disarming frost-tipped orbital manoeuvre being instigated by Chapterhouse and Slowdive. A gem.”

Losing Today

City Of Satellites ‘Moon In The Sea’ – Luna Kafe

tim — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 03:44:40 +0000

Excerpt: “City Of Satellites perform atmospheric music with an eerie twist. They play with the spacey and mystic, making a dreamy, slowly gliding expression. The twosome do fine, and ‘Moon In The Sea’ sort of delivers what its title promises. I see a moon reflection way off the coast line. Promising, very promising.”

Luna Kafe

City Of Satellites “The Spook” – I Am The Crime

tim — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 04:02:20 +0000

Excerpt: “Australian label Hidden Shoal has revealed yet another stunning piece of work in the form of City Of Satellites’ debut EP The Spook. Though very ethereal and dreamy, City Of Satellites are also quite melodic, which I find to be a nice change amongst the sometimes far too abstract post-rock available these days. The opening track and single ‘Moon In The Sea’ is the highlight, but the two remaining songs, ‘Sleeping In Disgrace’ and ‘The Spook’, are just as gorgeous. Consisting of an eerie dreamscape of spooky synths, weeping guitars and singer Jarrod’s frail but beautiful voice, this is definitely worthy of your attention.”

I Am The Crime

City Of Satellites ‘Moon In The Sea’ – Rock Sellout

tim — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 03:57:56 +0000

Excerpt: “a dreamy, almost goth-like sound to it. Beautiful!”

Rock Sellout