Hidden Shoal Recordings » HC-B Reviews

HC-B “Soundcheck for a Missing Movie” – WRUV

Thea Porter — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:22:51 +0000

Excerpt: “Quality Instrumental Post-Rock with a fierce emotion that will blast your face off for its entirety. This album is a stroke of magnificence that is rare in the world today. It transcends the regular notions of what music is, creating a radical art form that emphasizes perfection… The songs blend together to form a tsunami of shredding guitars, loud violins, free horns, booming basses and hammering drums… One of the greatest of its genre, and one of the greatest in music.”

WRUV Reviews

HC-B “Soundcheck For A Missing Movie” – Il Mucchio Selvaggio

tim — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:11:34 +0000

Excerpt (translated from the Italian): “A remarkable quantity of electric, acoustic and electronic instruments, and voice used occasionally, with which HC-B create their imaginative soundtracks, unifying post-punk, post-rock and the avant-garde in eclectic compositions. More authoritative and intriguing than their album Sliding On Barents Sea (2003), Soundcheck For A Missing Movie hypnotizes with eight complex episodes, where physical flashes sometimes break cerebral and emotional harmonies’ calm.”

Il Mucchio Selvaggio

HC-B “Soundcheck For A Missing Movie” – Rockerilla

tim — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:07:46 +0000

Excerpt (translated from the Italian): “two different faces in one soul: the first dissonant, moving music of legendary proportions in loud masses with a large ensemble; the second introverted, defined by math-rock grids. HC-B’s aesthetics are oriented to the reconstruction of livid and rough landscapes… Obscure and violent emotions, mitigated by the magical artifices of poetry. 8/10″

Rockerilla

HC-B “Soundcheck For A Missing Movie” – Drum Media

tim — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:03:32 +0000

Excerpt: “Sicilian quintet HC-B have bundled together a glorious collection of tracks here that summons the restraint and patience of bands like The For Carnation, the energy and effervescence of math-rock, and a gorgeous melodic sensibility that reminds us all why we liked post-rock in the first place… an album of small details – gutteral guitars are lifted up by wisps of white noise, delicate passages float by just that little bit smoother via backing theremins, and the occasional string section adds the requisite cinematic flourishes for which the album claims its title… enough inspired twists and solid jams to cement a place as one of the sharpest experimental rock releases of the year.”

Drum Media (Perth)

HC-B “Soundcheck For A Missing Movie” – The Silent Ballet

tim — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:33:48 +0000

Excerpt: “The band takes us on a journey through images they have captured in their mind, reforming them into a wide variety of tracks, ranging from cliff-hanging moments featuring crashing cymbals and feedback-laden electric guitar to the romantic and melodic sound of glockenspiels and strings. The group not only showcases these elements expertly, but infuses them together along with the sounds of trumpets, samples, clarinet, powerful bass guitar, piano, and synth sounds… Soundcheck for a Missing Movie is a must-listen for its unique, post rock-based take on the usual symphonic movie soundtrack we expect in our heads, a la John Williams. HC-B is doing something special, and is sure to take you on a journey of epic proportions.”

The Silent Ballet

HC-B “Soundcheck For A Missing Movie” – I Love Sicilia

tim — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:00:42 +0000

Excerpt (translated from the Italian): “HC-B are five Italian guys from Catania that have been playing together for 10 years… a fusion of sound and images, long phrasings, evident rhythms. Their music is independent rock; in fact, there aren’t any pop motifs nor banal verse/refrain structures, moving away from any known definitions toward its own universe.”

I Love Sicilia, May 2009

HC-B “Soundcheck For A Missing Movie” – Beat

tim — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:57:41 +0000

Excerpt (translated from the Italian): “Today it’s so hard to find an album that communicates so much; a disc which transmits true emotions… This is a well-played album that marks an evolution from their previous album Sliding on Barents Sea (2003).”

Beat, June 2009

HC-B “Soundcheck For A Missing Movie” – Blog Critics

tim — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:54:15 +0000

Excerpt: “This is an album that is vast in scope and imagination. Ranging from the seductively melodic, through to thrillingly intense and dramatic movements, it will both stimulate and captivate the listener. Its power is that it successfully creates a labyrinth of vivid visual images within your mind, like those left behind by the man who provided the inspiration… The album triumphantly builds towards several peaks of symphonic brilliance. Attention to detail, well developed ideas, and formidable instrumentation are all very much to the fore… It is little wonder that Hidden Shoal Recordings have been likened to 4AD. Bringing expansive music of this quality, from a band who can give devoted attention to detail one moment whilst contriving together to create free form cinematic rock the next, has to be applauded. Clearly this is a band that has as much focus as HC-B himself.”

Blog Critics

HC-B “Soundcheck For A Missing Movie” – Blow Up

tim — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:49:06 +0000

Excerpt (translated from the Italian): “The new album of HC-B, an underground band of exceptional quality, already shown in their previous works, surprises with some audacious deeds and the development of their arrangements…
Here we have a massive hard rock orchestra with some overflowing woodwinds, a sweet trumpet ballad, strings-rich post-folk, noise-rock backed by metronomic drums, and moments approaching the visionary Godspeed You Black Emperor!”

Blow Up #133, June 2009

HC-B “Soundcheck for a Missing Movie” – Rave Magazine

Hidden Shoal Recordings — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 22:46:09 +0000

“Italians and film music: a match made in heaven – the Holy Trinity being Ennio Morricone, Nino Rota and Dario Argento soundtrackers Goblin; however as Catania-based Hidden Shoal signees HC-B indicate, haunting soundscapes can exist separately from the celluloid. Named after famed French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, the cinemaphonic quintet have been recreating the atmosphere of murky movie theatres and grainy projections since 1999. Soundcheck For A Missing Movie, their latest LP, finds the band looking for a perfect spaghetti western/Mafia tale to score and instead writing an engrossing collection of elegiac etudes with enough potential to transcend the cinemascope. Opening epic A Dusty Book, City Of Lights gradually unveils all its sweeping-string/stinging-guitar glory over the course of ten minutes – with nary a dull moment between them; Black is as sinister as any Sicilian scene in The Godfather trilogy and the single Hot Afternoon In The Bulls’ Square is all corrida drumbeats and menacing brass drones. The sole vocals-dominated number on the album, the languid Slow Compensation is the calm after Playing With Planes’ eleven-minute crescendo storm. Ending with the post-rock blast of Missing Movie, the record doesn’t so much evoke maestro Morricone’s immortal pieces as creates its own imaginary city of hot sun and high drama, proving along the way there’s more to Sicily than la cosa nostra.”

Rave Magazine

HC-B “Soundcheck For A Missing Movie” – Textura

tim — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:51:37 +0000

Excerpt: “Think Giardini di Mirò’s the only ‘Italian instrumental rock’ outfit worth listening to? Not if HC-B has anything to say about it, as proven by the Sicilian quintet’s explosive, fifty-five-minute opus Soundcheck for a Missing Movie… What distinguishes HC-B’s sound is the energy and intensity which they bring to its material—even a somber, two-minute interlude such as ‘Dead Horse Walking’ feels on the verge of detonation, and much the same could be said for the dreamy ‘Slow Compensation’ and Red-like ‘Crystal Lane.’ Soundcheck for a Missing Movie may be a studio recording but it exudes the vitality of a well-oiled band attacking its material live. Tailor-made for fans of Giardini di Mirò, Explosions in the Sky, Do Make Say Think, Pacific UV, and bands of similar stripe.”

Textura

HC-B “Soundcheck For A Missing Movie” – Music Musings and Miscellany

tim — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:17:17 +0000

Excerpt: “Mostly instrumental, the record has more in common with the likes of Do Make Say Think and Grails than it does with the hoards of quiet-loud merchants. They’re not afraid to lift the pace higher than the usual stately plod, either. Album highlight ‘Hot Afternoon In The Bulls’ Square’ comes in with a military snare drum clatter and a driving bass line redolent of Pink Floyd’s ‘One Of These Days’. With the melody driven by the horns, it’s refreshingly direct… ‘Crystal Lane’ starts all shoegazy, but then ends like Led Zeppelin, with some Bonhamesque tubthumping and some gloriously paleolithic riffing. ‘Missing Movie’ is a fittingly raucous finale… Certainly HC-B have more about them than most in their field. Soundcheck For A Missing Movie isn’t totally consistent, but at its best it’s terrific.”

Music Musings and Miscellany

HC-B “Soundcheck For A Missing Movie” – [sic]

tim — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 03:38:37 +0000

Excerpt: “HC-B employ a myriad of instrumentation to create an impassioned, often bombastic sound. There’s an air of King Crimson-esque authority to a number of tracks… The five core members of this band collaborate with string sections and brass arrangements throughout, entangling their guitars, bass and percussion in a sea of elegant instrumentation, along with subtle touches of synth, electronics and ghostly Theremin howls. Such a policy results in inspiring, crescendo-laden numbers like ‘Playing with Planes’ which builds momentum via introspective hues not a million miles away from Tortoise… HC-B cram as much as possible into Soundcheck’s 50-minute running time and it actually comes as a disappointment when it ends. There’s simply far too much going on in this record that to simply label these Italians as a mere post-rock band would be doing them a great disservice.”

[sic]

HC-B “Soundcheck For A Missing Movie” – Luna Kafe

tim — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 05:17:39 +0000

Excerpt: “opening track ‘A Dusty Book, A City Of Lights’ sets an elegant standard, with its dreamy, jazz-like beginning that builds up to a crescendo of heavy bass, celebrating horns, frantic drums and an insisting guitar. And as many of the other tracks on this album, it is an almost ten-minute-long pleasure to listen to. Just holding you on the verge of noisiness. This balance between the melodic, almost atmospheric symphonic, and the more noise-rock expression is some of what impresses me the most with this brilliant album…. And here I could have gone on an on about the small things that makes this such a great piece of modern symphonic rock. Because that is what HC-B present on Soundcheck For A Missing Movie; post-rock as it is meant to be. Seductive, visual, noisy and mind-blowing.”

Luna Kafe

HC-B “Soundcheck For A Missing Movie” – Il Cibidina

tim — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 02:41:20 +0000

Excerpt (translated from the Italian): “on this superb Soundcheck For A Missing Movie, snapshots become animated, slides find colours: the wild tramping of a bull herd towards a boiling arena (‘Hot Afternoon In The Bulls’ Square’), a book covered with dust, but lit up by a city’s lights (‘A Dusty Book, A City Of Lights’), the shadow of a child playing with a toy plane (‘Playing With Planes’) and, at last, a film that finds the good that we all thought had disappeared (‘Missing Movie’). The projector restarts, jams and cuts out; the record is finished, the movie too. But did it ever exist?”

Il Cibidina

HC-B “Soundcheck For A Missing Movie” – Even In The Future Nothing Works

tim — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 07:02:10 +0000

Excerpt: “In a very precise manner: these guys rock… The CD’s opening track, sounds akin to something that would be on the Fight Club soundtrack; if the Dust Brothers weren’t in control. Maybe not so much Fight Club, but like, any good movie in which someone has a crashing realisation… Make no mistake; this is instrumental post-rock with attention grabbing orchestral construction… HC-B really are something special.”

Even In The Future Nothing Works

HC-B ‘Hot Afternoon in the Bulls’ Square’ – [sic]

tim — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:42:42 +0000

Excerpt: “it occurs to me this excellent instrumental, a taster of the forthcoming album, is like nothing so much as the exceptional band Morphine. Different too, of course. More jazz, baby. No vocals. But the smoky smack basement is evident in the almost elegiac horns atop the marshal beat, everyone in shades mourning and celebrating in the same moment. A glorious entrance to a wider world of HC-B.”

[sic]

HC-B “Hot Afternoon In The Bulls’ Square” – Luna Kafe

tim — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:59:14 +0000

Excerpt: “It opens with electronic noise, and ends as an almost classic triumphant anthem. And in between that you get a swarm of metallic bees, sound shaped by jazz-horns, a drum beat on speed and a heavy bass that slowly delivers the fanfare-like theme-line. Which sweeps you away completely… a massive piece of symphonic rock.”

Luna Kafe

HC-B Review in Blow Up No. 71

Hidden Shoal Recordings — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:48:28 +0000

Excerpt (translated from the Italian): “Working in work the Catania’s band establishes and refines a creative identity. I knew them as authors of an experimental rock, between composition and free form, with strong appeals to progressive (the one who comes up with Blurt) and post rock. Then a passage of research and consolidation and now an effective trait d’union joins
monochrome psychedelic rock and avant-garde material.”

Blow Up No. 71

HC-B Review in Dalinks

Hidden Shoal Recordings — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:45:53 +0000

Excerpt: “With the music of HC-B we born and we die, then reborn to die again. In the middle of this cycle you throw the pictures you want. Indeed, try to catch what you want to find, without delay. Minimalism sound, noise, sample, trumpet and traditional instruments are the seed of this cycle. Songs that go one after the other and that are assembled within a single visual kaleidoscopic framework. A band who is able to express the unsaid, that silence that suggests much more than a debate can do and it can do our own movie soundtrack, the one that everyone hides in his head and heart. Well the HC-B could be the completion of our most hidden feelings. Would be a shame to let them go unnoticed, a major waste of visionary, evocative and literary talent.”

Dalinks

HC-B Freak Out Review

Hidden Shoal Recordings — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:44:19 +0000

Excerpt: “From krautrock to the Canterbury school, from science-fiction films to Godspeed You Black Emperor!, the Sicilian band metabolize everything with sensitivity and personality… HC-B will be on everyone’s lips for some time to come”

Freak Out