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.

We have a special treat for you with our first blog post for 2012. Salli Lunn’s masterful 2010 album Heresy and Rite gets a track by track exposition not only by the band but also by the man behind its stunning production, Jonas Munk (Manual, Causa Sui). This really is a wonderful window in to what is a very special album and also a lovely pre-cursor to the recently released A Frame of Reference which sees a selection of tracks from Heresy and Rite remixed and reworked by the likes of Scott Solter, Manual, Markus Mehr,  City of Satellites and TV-Baby.

Continuing in our love of all things Salli Lunn we’re also giving away a CD copy of Heresy and Rite. All you have to do is send an email to contact [at] hiddenshoal.com with “Salli Lunn Giveaway” in the subject line. We’ll draw a winner at the end of January.

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Note: Stream the album in full at the bottom of this post

#1 The Frame of Reference

SL: Though all of us come from different musical outlooks and take in different inspirations, we’ve always had the common interest in exploring rhythms as the musical takeoff. Right before we started the recordings this song wasn’t finished and it was therefore close to not making the final cut. The whole track basicly came together from the same rhythmic patterns and the moods it spawned. In the eleventh hour we luckily found the right balance between the repetitious structures and atmospheric arrangement and the outcome remains a favourite today.

JM: Probably not the easiest track to get into on the album. It was still very open when we started recording so it basically came together in the process of recording and mixing. I think it’s an interesting mix with the mood of the song being kinda cold and dark and the layers of drums and percussion having an ethnic, exotic kinda vibe. The band let me play around with the last instrumental part while mixing – very unusual for me to do something that noisy, but somehow this track demanded to be taken all out.

#2 Parachutes Forever

SL: The oldest song of the record and at the same time it’s most immediate pophook. It was written after a concert with Speaker Bite Me – an earlier Danish bandfavorite and source of inspiration back in the days. Their respective mixtures of noise and minimalistic pop-melodies left a certain, though not that obvious, mark on the composition. Jonas did very well in picking up the shoegazy tendencies and pulling them out of the cupboard both here and throughout the album.

JM: This song is so well put together. The instrumental part in the middle of the track is amazing. We wanted an atmospheric, shoegazy feel for this one while still emphasizing the punch and heaviness of the rhythm section. Generally we wanted a very natural sound for the album but still with a lot of layers and details in the mix, and I think this track is a good example of how nicely it worked out. It has the raw vibe of four people playing together in a room, but here and there some dubby echoes creep out of the soundscape. There are also synths and lots of guitar-overdubs in the mix but they weaved into the original framework very discretely and add a certain depth to it.

#3 The Invention of Steel

SL: Another track centered around repetitious patterns, but at the same time undergoing subtle musical developments creating these slowly building crescendos, which Jonas’ production really helped in shaping. The “intervening” parts separating the verse structures together with the noise sections are probably one way of enticing people to reference post rock when reviewing our music, but we’ve never really been trying to inhabit this set of musical idioms. For us it’s always just been about experimenting with the juxtaposition of different musical moods and movements.

JM: I love the guitars in this track – there’s a very nice interplay between what Lasse is doing in the right side of the stereofield and what Christian is doing in the left.

#4 Fast Cars, Clean Bodies

SL: In a hotchpotch of lyrical references this is the one proper love song of the album laid in a rewritten poem by William Carlos Williams. The film noir-narrative stages the progress of a relationship as a walk one late night. Compositionally, it is ironically also the heaviest track on the album with both postpunk- and stonerrock-aspirations, which in conclusion unites in a long descending spiral. Again Jonas did an amazing job producing and really brought out the sheer frightening cold of psychological mechanisms at play in the human spirit here.

JM: This is the first track I fell in love with back when they sent me some recordings from their rehearsals. I was definitely attracted to the Slint-like feel of it and wanted to maintain that aspect of the track in the album version. But where Slint’s guitars usually sounded very sharp and thin, we wanted the peaks in this track to sound earthy and heavy. I love Jan’s bassplaying – he has a style that reminds me a lot early/mid 1990s Chicago/Washington post-hardcore bands such as Jawbox, Unwound and Unsane. Very few people play bass like that anymore. I ran Lasse’s vocals through a small Fender amp to get that creepy lo-fi vocal sound.

#5 Mirror Girl

SL: Paradoxically this is a track that demanded us to play really tight but still letting go and play loose at the same time. Musically the song origins in a fascination of the French composer Olivier Messian’s use of, amongst others, octatonic scales coupled with the early noiserock of Blonde Redhead and 70s King Crimson.

JM: I think this track was the hardest one to nail. It has a super complex structure and it was tough getting each part right as well as keeping a logical continuity overall. The track has that wonderful 1990s northern US-vibe like the rest of the album but there’s also a prog-rock feel to it. The band references King Crimson but I would go all the way and say it sounds a bit like an indie-version of Tool. We used a Leslie/rotating speaker-effect on the vocals in the breakdown section, which works marvellously. To be perfectly honest, I got that idea from Korn’s 1999 hit “Freak on a Leash” – a guilty pleasure of mine.

#6 Belongings

SL: Belongings represents some of the more eerie and insidious sides of our songwriting placed in a short and compact format. Helping to bring out both the sinister and the pop-elements of the track was the coupling of both Lasse and Line’s vocals, which we hadn’t really tried before. This was also a tricky one to record because of all the skewed rhythmical shifts and we ended up using a take that featured an unintentional but really well-functioning transition near the ending.

#7 Birthmark

SL: Probably the song with the most obvious Unwound-inspiration and at the same time the most uncompromising song among the bunch featuring propulsive drumming in 5/8, atonal guitar patterns, clusterchords and Lasse’s frenetic over-the-top screams. The ending is a favorite moment on the record; the sudden and very unnatural sounding complete silence came up coincidentally, but somehow it fits the intense and psychologically surreal mood of the song perfectly.

JM: This is probably the track where the post-hardcore influence is most apparent. I love the guitars in the outro – again I’m reminded of Jawbox. And Line plays some awesome drums. Great track.

#8 The First Cause

SL: With The First Cause we set out to merge swirling soundscapes with ongoing, almost floating rhythms and distinct melodies in the midst of it all. Taking place in this setting of speed, the song evolves around the relationship to the past and the journey as rite. With the ending reaching a near-transcending effect it seemed very appropriate to let the song be the final statement on the album.

JM: This track has a wonderful motoric groove from start to finish and the band manages to weave all the aspects of their sound into one homogenous piece. Again, there’s a lot of different sounds in this track, but it doesn’t sound too artificial or polished. It still sounds raw and natural even though there’s a lot going on in the soundscape all the time.

We’ve been slowly building up our SoundCloud streams and YouTube Mp3 streams so we’ll drop a featured track regularly here on the blog for your delectation.

First cab off the rank is the awesome Manual (aka Jonas Munk) remix of the Salli Lunn track ‘The Invention of Steel’. The track is lifted from the wonderful Salli Lunn remix album A Frame Of Reference I which features remixes from the likes of Scott Solter, Markus Mehr, City of Satellites, TV Baby and Manual along with previously unreleased tracks. Its a gem so do have a listen if you’ve not already. Those in the know will realise that Jonas Munk actually produced Heresy and Rite, the album that the remixed originals spring from. Jonas is also one third of the wonderful Causa Sui along with Jess Kahr and Jakob Skott (Syntaks).

Enjoy!

Salli Lunn – ‘The Invention of Steel (Manual Remix)’

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!