We asked Markus Mehr if he’d be so kind as to make a mixtape for us of his favourite tunes. What we got was this wonderfully eclectic mix below that has been on high rotation in the Hidden Shoal office since it arrived. There’s something incredibly satisfying hearing Taylor Deupree follow up the Beach Boys – if only this could happen live! There’s also something almost revealing when listening to the mix and pondering on Mehr’s latest masterpiece On. The complexity and variety of elements that, almost despite themselves, make a greater whole than the sum of their parts.

Enjoy the mix, read Markus’s liner notes below and don’t forget to check out  On and Mehr’s previous albums In and Lava over at the Hidden Shoal Store.

1. B-52s – 52 Girls

This track is from the yellow album – one of my few desert island discs.

2. Ryuichi Sakamoto – Nostalgia

I overlooked this one at first, but it’s a grower.

3. Stephan Mathieu – Hidden Name

A very reeellaaaxed track, like Stephan himself. Nice guy, brilliant artist.

4. Beach Boys – Pet Sounds

I´m the proud owner of all the Beach Boys albums on vinyl! I would consider myself a fan…

5. Taylor Deupree – Worn

Super track, never seen this guy live – have to.

6. Dean Taylor – Fire And Rain

Oh, how I love 70s American crooner shit. This one is very touching.

7. Aki Omnda – Dance

Didn’t know this guy, but a friend gave me a tape with this one on. The fact I’ve put this one on this mixtape is sign of how much I like it.

8. Deaf Center – New Beginning

I also discovered this very late. ‚New Beginning’ is from the album Owl Splinters – I highly recommend this CD for lovers of music with a darker feel.

9. Gerald Fiebig –  6:39 Über Halberstadt

A fellow from my hometown. We will perform together soon.

10. Four Tet – Jupiter

A mixtape without this track is not a mixtape!

11. Hatchback – White Diamond

I first heard this track in a record store in New York, asked the owner of the shop what it was, and bought it.

12. Space – Magic Fly

I´m a bit addicted to good disco shit of the 70s too. This is one of my all-time favourites

13. Oneohtrix Point Never – Returnal

Crazy stuff.

14. Tom Hessler – Glass Kreisel

One of my closest friends, so I´m biased. He’s actually quite a popular songwriter with really good German lyrics. ‚Glass Kreisel’ shows his passion for the dance terrain.

15. Nilsson – One

When it comes down to songcraft, this is one of the best songs ever written.

16. Philip Jeck & Janek Schaefer – Song for Europe

Two heroes of mine.

17. Danijel Zambo – Im Verschneiten Walde

Again, a buddy from my hometown –check him out! This guy is a genius.

18. Aun – Protection

You’ve got to see him on stage. This is killer.

19. Ben Frost – Killshot

The title says it all! The whole album blew me away.

20. Pioneers of HiFi – Zeitforscher

A project of mine… Forgive my indulgence!

21. Andy Williams – Too Late

As I said before, I´m really into this crooner stuff. Andy Williams was the King of Mount Schmaltz.

22. Chant Des Derwishes De Turquie – Unknown

Bought this record in a weird record store out of curiosity. Musically we´ve got something in common.

23. Philip Jeck – Pilot Dark Blue Night

My hero.

24. Jerome Faria – Untitled

Very interesting stuff. I only know this one track, but I will check out more.

25. Yellow Magic Orchestra – Castalia

Huge fan – nothing more to say.

26. Nils Frahm – Peter

The show pony of Erased Tapes – for good reason. I love his approach to classical music.

27.  KTL – Wicked Way 

The goods when it comes to drone music.

28. DJ Shadow  – Six Days

It closes how it began, with the genius touch of Miles Davis. Good party stuff.

Markus Mehr has just released his epic new album In, the follow-up to his critically acclaimed solo debut Lava, and the first in an ambitious yet perfectly realised trilogy, completed by the forthcoming On and Off. Markus chatted to video artist Stefanie Sixt about his music, her visuals, and their ongoing collaboration. Check at the bottom of the interview for competition details.

Markus Mehr: Although I work with you, Stefanie, I’m not physically with you when you start to collect material and ideas to generate the visuals for our collaboration. Please tell us more about this process and your approach on my piece ‘Transit’ (featured in part three of the trilogy, Off, to be released in January 2013)?

Stefanie Sixt: Well, the process is always dependent upon the subject and the sound. In the case of ‘Transit’, it all started with research about life, death and the question of a spiritual life after. Posing a thousand philosophical questions and reaching almost no answers, I had to make a decision about how to visualise an abstract field.

During my walks in nature with my dog, Sanzcha, I started taking fuzzy black-and-white photographs of light reflections. I’m using animation to create new worlds out of the footage, which in most cases aren’t reminiscent of the original shots at all. Turning the world upside down – that’s fun! Not everything is what it seems to be. We are just some narrow-minded humans, trying to understand a bit more of the world. Speaking of understanding, how did you get the idea to create a 50-minute piece comprising one repetitive mantra? Didn’t you worry that it would bore an audience to death?

MM: ‘Transit’ actually comprises two different themes, so the piece has an A/B/A/B/A structure. By the time we were talking about collaborating on a new performance, I was working on a piece of music that would later become the B section of the composition. This particular part perfectly fitted what we’d been talking about in terms of theme. It’s the harmonic, bright and friendly part of the track. It loops around itself very slowly. I call it an electronic canon! Cyclical sounds or patterns are something you can find in almost all of my music, especially In, On and Off.

SS: What prompted you to use your toothbrush to create sound?

MM: A sense of fun and curiosity! I’m still fascinated by people like Keith Rowe, for example. He experimented with using things on the guitar; I tried something on my own. Devices like shavers or ventilators held over a guitar’s pick-up can do some really interesting things and create nice noises. Combining these two patterns turned out to be my inspiration on ‘Transit’. However, in comparison to ‘Komo’ (from In) or ‘Synchron’, the work on the live version of ‘Transit’ was a much closer collaboration between the two of us.

SS: On our first project, ‘Cousteau’ (from Lava), we worked pretty much on our own until we got on stage.

Now we’re influencing each other while we’re creating the piece and rehearsing the performance. It’s much more complex, I would say. In your opinion, what do the visuals add that music can’t express?

MM: For our live performances, the visuals are very, very important. It opens up new dimensions, intensifying and deepening the viewer’s emotional response. Our work together is really falling into place. Not all visual work fits my music – and vice versa. However, when it comes to listening to my albums, the music has to stand on its own. My approach is to offer a package of sound, sometimes brutal and distorted, sometimes moody, melancholic and relaxed, when we play live. But following up on my first question, the visuals on ‘Transit’ have a very clear, almost technocratic appeal, but without being cold.

SS: Maybe it’s due to the origin of the visuals – it’s all organic. Within the process, the technocratic aspect is added. In the end, this might evoke the emotions people tell us about. Your sound compositions are similar, aren’t they? Even though your sounds sometimes build up into pure noise, there’s always enough melodic space to sink into. That’s why I’m into your music.

MM: Very often the starting point is a musical phrase I found somewhere. Most of the time a harmony or melody attracts my attention. Once I’m attracted by a phrase I start to play around with it and see if the idea for a piece emerges. A lot of the time I do reject things because nothing comes up at all. But when an idea starts to work, the excitement builds. Arranging, distorting and playing around with the fragments is a very satisfying part of the process. It becomes easy, once you have a vision. I hope people will like it.

SS: I’m convinced they will. Your music is like a dialogue, an inner journey. It’s awesome to add my visuals to your music, taking the audience even further on this audiovisual trip.

Markus Mehr’s new album In is available now in limited edition CD and digital formats from the Hidden Shoal Store. We are also offering a CD copy of Markus Mehr’s Lava for one lucky winner. All we require is for you to tell us the name of the 2nd track on Mehr’s latest release In. Send your answer to contact[at]hiddenshoal.com with “Markus Mehr Competition” in the subject line. You’ve got until April 21st, 2012.

This week on the HSR blog we delve into the wondrous musical and sonic mind of Scott Solter. Scott’s stunning album One River was re-released by Hidden Shoal in 2011 and ended up on a number of end of year best of lists and scooped some deservedly glowing reviews. Scott is of course also one half of the amazing Boxharp along with Wendy Allen and their band of merry contributors. And let’s not forget his work with Balustrade Ensemble and his ridiculously awesome list of production credits.

Hidden Shoal’s Cam Merton recently dropped five questions on Scott.

CM: How did One River come about? Your previous release under your own name, The Brief Light (Manifold Records, 2003), was markedly different in its pallet and aesthetic.

SS: The pieces began as improvisations with guitar and tape loops. There was no agenda at first. The Brief Light, on the other hand, was music that grew out of teaching myself how to record audio. I had collected a number of instruments over the years that I was too lazy to practice, but when I got the itch to learn record making I pulled out everything and started banging away.

CM: There is a level of compositional complexity at play in One River that may not be immediately apparent depending on your listening mode. Can you talk about this and perhaps expand on your compositional process for One River?

SS: Compositionally it was impulsive and improvised in its technique. I was looking at various images of water and wondered what sort of music they would make. Simple idea. Technically speaking I would build a melody slowly and continue adding harmony until it felt musical. From there it was about how shallow or deep, calm or volatile to take it. After each piece was constructed I’d look for more undercurrents using various tape machine playback speeds. Eventually all the machines were set in motion and mixed live.

CM: I believe that works such as One River require a special mode of listening to fully appreciate. Do you think that it’s important for music to ask something of the listener?

SS: Maybe the proper mode is really just giving space and time for listening. Hopefully the work is compelling enough to firstly draw someone’s attention. I do like a certain open landscape or emotional neutrality to exist in the music so as to offer a listener the chance to plug in their own narratives.

CM: You’ve produced, mixed, engineered for indie (I apologise for the term) artists like Mountain Goats, John Vanderslice, Superchunk, Pattern is Movement and Erik Friedlander to name but a few. What, if anything, do you take from this work into your solo work and also your work with Boxharp? Inversely what do your bring from your own work into these sessions?

SS: The methods of approach are always a work in progress. I like to bring as much of my sensibility to the event as I can but it depends on the variables of the project. On the surface, a lot of these records sound drastically different in tone. Some of them have allowed me to build from the ground up, giving me a great deal of creative license. Others have very limited schedules or resources, requiring me to hit the ground running. Maybe there’s a connection between them that sits deeper. I’m not sure. However, as I move forward in my work I do feel that certain methods have begun to thread themselves through all of the projects.

CM: What’s next for you in solo mode and also for Boxharp?

SS: Several records in the works… Grant Miller and I are close to finishing a new Balustrade Ensemble record that should be ready in soon. There’s also a collection of dark dubs I’m putting together with Rohner Segnitz that I’d like to see released. Boxharp has a great deal of material assembled and recorded that should result in a full length and some singles. There’s also a follow up to One River that should be finished in a few months.

I guess that’s it for now, thanks :^D

“Twins and Wives: a film for One River” by Mark Solter and Laura Solter (DVD release coming early 2012)

We’ve been having some fun playing at 8tracks.com this year. We’ll be featuring a number of 8tracks mixes from the label folks and artists alike on the blog. To get the proverbial ball rolling here’s an all HSR mixtape by Hidden Shoal’s Cam Merton featuring tracks by Elisa Luu, My Majestic Star, Sleeping Me, Wes Willenbring, Markus Mehr, Slow Dancing Society, Stray Ghost, RL/VL, Liam Singer and Jumpel. Enjoy!