People we have a treat for you. Chamber-pop experimentalist extraordinaire Liam Singer walks us track by track through his critically acclaimed 2010 album Dislocatia. Lots of wonderful insights and fun factoids from our man on the inside.

Before you go on, we’ve provided a full album stream via Bandcamp at the bottom of the post. You should also head here to a) download the three free (!) singles off the album and b) buy the album on CD or digital.

To co-incide with this lovely little expose Hidden Shoal have two copies of the CD up for grabs. Answer one stupidly simple question and be in the the draw to win. Send an email to this address with “Dislocation Comp” in the subject line and tell us which Cat Power song Liam Singer covers on Dislocatia. We’ll contact the winners on the 4th of November.

Dislocatia Track by Track

1. On Earth a Wandering Stranger Was I Born

I wanted this piece to have the feel of an old movie’s opening credits – that overture-like, technicolor sweep.  The title is paraphrased from an inscription by the side of the road that Werner Herzog recounts in his journal “Of Walking in Ice” – “On earth a restless stranger was I born/In mortal danger, though in the midst of life”

2. The Brief Encounter

This was a fun one to record with the children’s choir – having them sing the line “you are wasting your life” over and over again.  They were curious what the song was about.  One sort of spazzy boy came up to me afterward and said “It’s true, isn’t it?  What are any of us really doing here?”  So I think I gave him his first existential crisis.  I wrote the melody for this song while driving up the California coast from Half-Moon Bay to San Francisco, meaning that first line (“I was driving up the coast”) did, in fact, happen.  Not that the rest of it didn’t…

3.  Leave the World to Those Who Care

I could listen to Wendy Allen’s voice forever.  She should be famous.

4.  Mold Me Torn Fan

A very Nino Rota-inspired track.  I was happy with how this piece worked out arrangement-wise… Scott Solter and I played around with a lot of sounds in the studio.  The title is an anagram for Morton Feldman, who is a recurring character on this record.

5.  Winter Weeds

As this album was starting to take shape, I noticed that there weren’t many pieces based on musical loops… everything was very harmonically forward-moving, and I thought it would be nice to have something that was structured more in the addition/subtraction of elements.  I was very into the M83 album Saturdays=Youth at the time, so I thought I’d try to take the quality of the 80′s contrapuntal action I was hearing on that album and transport it to a 19th century quaker meeting…

6.  Dislocatia/Mouthmoss

I think a lot of people skip over this track, though it’s one of my favorites on the album – I love melodies that exist at the edge of tonality.

7.   Bellingham, WA and the Four Green Doors beyond

This song is about a road trip I took with a friend.  The Four Green Doors in the title are a reference to a piece I later saw at the Whitney Biennial by Adam Putnam called “Green Hallway,” which uses light and mirrors to project four green infinite passageways onto the four walls of a room.  The room felt to me like like a meeting place of past and future events, and of possible lives.

8.  Morton Feldman Holding Notes for Eternity

I honestly have no idea how I thought of this song… It’s a strange one.

9.  Dead Old Friend

I’ve been surprised by how many people really like this track.  With some distance, I can see that it has a sort of Edward Gorey-esque quality that sometimes seems to show up I my music.  I wanted body sounds for the percussion – I liked the mental image of a couple of old guys dancing around and clapping – so most of the noises are generated by Dave Flaherty, the percussionist, clapping his hands and slapping his belly.

10.  Victory Steps

One of the more difficult things for me to do is write a simple pretty melody without getting too clever or strange with it.  Thus, the main melody of this piece is a victory for me.  I did let myself get a little clever and strange in the middle section.  “Victory Steps” is a nonexistent victorian-era dance/strut that one does to this song, at least in my head.

11.  Cross Bones Style

I’ve always loved this Cat-Power song, and started playing it for myself on the piano.  As it evolved, I started bringing in Philip Glassy polyrhythms, and then envisioning the close harmonies that you hear Wendy Allen singing so beautifully.

12.  Words Make the Master

This is one of a couple pieces on this album that I wrote while living on an island in Maine for a little while.  You’d think a quiet place might result in quieter music, but I found the opposite to be true – my own thoughts became amplified, and I started indulging in the heightened craziness you hear here.

13. Erat Hora

Another piece that is very Nino Rota/Ennio Morricone inspired.  The title is the name of an Ezra Pound poem:

‘Thank you, whatever comes.’ And then she turned

And, as the ray of sun on hanging flowers

Fades when the wind hath lifted them aside,

Went swiftly from me. Nay, whatever comes

One hour was sunlit and the most high gods

May not make boast of any better thing

Than to have watched that hour as it passed.

I like that, in between everything that’s difficult and impenetrable and cranky about Ezra Pound’s work, he wrote beautiful sentimental little things like that.

14. Into Tendril and Vine

I almost didn’t put this song on the album – at the time, I think I was a little embarrassed by how theatrical it was.  Now I really like it, which is a good lesson in not being afraid to go a little bit over the top.

15. From Fast to Slow/ Behind This World

Thanks once again to Wendy Allen’s vocal acrobatics, the tumbling counterpoint lines here really shine through.  I feel like this song contains the seeds for an entire approach to songwriting – one that I haven’t continued to explore, but would like to return to one day.

16.  Stinson Beach

Like “Dislocatia/Mouthmoss,” “Stinson Beach” is a track that is not immediately accessible and doesn’t get a lot of love, but that I’m personally very proud of.  It’s abstract and slow, but ultimately melodically driven.  Stinson Beach is a beach town north of San Francisco.  When I lived in SF I took a lot of trips there, and have some great memories of the place.

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!

Liam Singer, the man behind 2010′s sublime Discloatia, gives us the lowdown on 5 albums that have been turning his table of late. Keep your eyes out here for an upcoming track by track exposition of Dislocatia by the lovely Mister Singer himself.

Sufjan Stevens – The Age of Adz

I came to The Age of Adz a little bit late… it initially turned me off, and I didn’t give it much of a chance beyond my initial impression.  But a few months ago I listened to it again, and everything about it suddenly made sense to me – I’m pretty obsessed with the album now (though still can’t quite get behind the 20-minute long closer) and think that it’s far and away his most original, complex work.  It’s filled with so many strange, wonderful little hooks, asides, and inventive arrangements.  The soft edges of the production combined with the angular songwriting and electro-acoustic instrumentation give it a hallucinatory quality that I love.  It seems as though he’s moving from “confessional” territory into an attempt at a more direct form of musical communication.  I really look forward to hearing what he does next.

Prurient – Bermuda Drain

I don’t follow the world of noise music very closely, but have always been into what I’ve heard heard of Prurient.  The sound of his newest album came as a surprise – like Trent Reznor decided to make a record with Jean Michelle-Jarre.  Really love the combination of beautiful sequenced synth sounds with harsher noise and screaming.  I’ve really been listening to it a lot, and often find it unexpectedly moving.  I also really like his lyrics, when you can understand them.

Szliard – A Petal Fell

This has been one of my favorite ambient/texture/found sound recordings I’ve heard in a while.  Reminds me in places of Colleen, Susumu Yokota, or Tape – I’ve had it on often in my apartment over the past few weeks.  We’re connected through the Brooklyn music scene, and I recently contributed a reading of a Baudelaire poem to his newest work-in-progress – look very forward to hearing what he does with it!

Jack Shriner – Dismember/Remember

I’ve been friends with Jack for about twelve years now, and since I’ve known him he and his 3 brothers have reliably churned out album after album of inventive rock that continues to explore new territory, while never betraying a youth spent churning out prog-epics in their Milwaukee basement.  Most of Jack’s albums don’t make it past his friends, but if any should it’s Dismember/Remember – his best work yet.  I especially love “World Turns Twice” followed by “Short Winter.”

Beach Boys – Pet Sounds

There are some albums that I’ve listened to for such a long time, and feel like I know so well, I hardly bother to put them on anymore.  Then I’ll sit down after a couple of years and have my mind blown my all over again.  I’m having my rennaisance with Pet Sounds right now – there are a lot of details in the arrangements and idiosincasies of the songwriting that I never really appreciated before.  There’s nothing to much to say about this record that hasn’t been said, but if you haven’t picked it up in a while then let me suggest you put on a pair of good headphones and take the plunge into Wilson’s melancholy acid-dream!

Ok, so we only managed to get a few articles and lists up on this blog before the monster of a relentless release schedule swallowed us whole. Well you’ll be pleased to know that we’ve found an extra 3 hours in the day, previously unknown to the ordinary working man and/or woman. This means the HSR Blog shall ride once more! Expect interviews with our artists, mixtapes, music lists from the label folk and artists alike, album track by tracks along with all sorts of tomfoolery, shennanigans and general hijinx. First cab off the rank is Liam Singer with his fave top 5 albums of the moment and then following that a wonderful track by track description of Dislocatia.