Excerpt: “I am always ecstatic to see new emails and records from Hidden Shoal Recordings, a Perth, Western Australia-based label who have quickly become one of my favorite experimental music outposts over the past year. They consistently release adventurous ambient/drone, shoegaze and pop that is radiant and textured and expansive and dense with incandescent ticks from around the world.”
Excerpt (translated from the German): “A majestic, long-drawn sound, swelling, soft-onset synthetic drums, a seemingly endless organ sound. I Haven’t Got It In Me begins with an 8-minute dream of clouds… Voluptuous walls of guitars, melodic and dramatic landscapes and spherical sound effects of any kind achieve the goal of harmony and well-tempered satisfaction with the listener.”
Excerpt: “The album delivers fifty-one minutes of reverb-drenched vocal harmonies and raw guitars that may roar but not so loudly they conceal the fundamental elegance of the band’s material (the instrumentals “Mitre Peak” and “Dry Lakes” cases in point).The group opens I Haven’t Got It In Me boldly with a dramatic, eight-minute instrumental, “Stranger,” that’s elevated by Braun’s beautiful cello playing; hearing the instrument swim through the oceanic mass generated by the guitar is a wonder to behold, and the tune’s epic quality imbues its post-rock with a rather prog-like aura.”
Excerpt: “Their ouevre is post-shoegaze / nu-gaze or whatever you’d like to call it, with obvious nods to the likes of My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and particularly the Drop Nineteens. What stands them apart is Miriam Braun’s sympathetic cello playing. The instrument isn’t over-used, but shines when it leads the melodies rather than just being used as a background drone instrument. I Haven’t Got It In Me is a mixed bag of vocal tunes and instrumentals. It’s also a mixed bag of sonically adventurous pieces, and straightforward slowish indie-pop.
