HIDDEN SHOAL PUBLISHING - Key Persons

Chloë March

Job Titles:
  • Artist
  • English Artist
  • S "Starlings & Crows" in Mark Griffin 's Best of 2020
  • S "Starlings & Crows" in Textura 's Top 10 of 2020
  • S "Starlings & Crows" in the Curve Ball Top 30 for 2020
  • Starlings & Crows" Out Now
  • Starlings & Crows" Reviewed at Textura
  • Starlings & Crows" Reviewed by Craig Laurance Gidney
  • to a Place' Reviewed at Trust the Doc
Chloë March's first album includes pared-down ballads for piano and voice and her first explorations into more epic, multi-layered highly evocative soundworlds. "Sophisticated songwriting… a trace of David Sylvian's jazz-tinted sound…The utterly gorgeous melody and March's singing are exceptional. Snowdrop is a thing of beauty." - Collected Sounds Biography Chloë March has always lived a life with music at its heart. She grew up as part of a musical family, with both her parents musicians at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Her mother's daily practice of playing Chopin, Beethoven, Debussy and Schumann pieces on the piano was the soundtrack to her young life, and March began piano lessons aged four. Later, after her parents divorced, songwriting and improvising on the piano became vital to her. Her early life was steeped in classical and jazz, with raids on her siblings' record collections revealing wondrous new worlds created by Kate Bush, Pink Floyd and Joni Mitchell, which led to the discovery of David Sylvian, the Cocteau Twins and Steve Reich, all of which influenced her own music. Playing in bands with her brother and spending time in his 8-track home studio sparked a passion for recording, particularly for building up soundscapes with the texture and depth of multi-tracking. This early experimentation forged a determination to be in control of her own recording at home, with her current digital set-up only occasionally disrupted by her cat, musicologist partner, and various guest musicians. March's long, slow discovery of her singing voice has been an odyssey of sorts, gradually finding the confidence and freedom to reveal a jazz-inflected alto that has been variously described as "absolutely charismatic", "mesmerising" and "luminous". Inspired by myth, history, fairytales, books, film and the sensuality of the natural world, with an obsessive attention to detail and a desire to create intensely atmospheric and emotionally truthful music, March has been recording and producing her own music since she released her second album Divining in 2008. Prior to Divining, she toured the UK and Italy as keyboard player with the band Cousteau, released her first album Snowdrop in 2004, and composed for theatre and dance, including the 40-minute electro-orchestral soundtrack Politik. March has also worked with German ambient producer Jumpel, singing on his 2010 single ‘Edinburgh' and four songs on his 2013 album Bloc4. Her latest album, and her first for Hidden Shoal, Nights Bright Days, has been four years in the making. It was initially inspired by the night and metamorphosis, and became a cycle of songs as dreams, imbued with images of darkness and light. The album embraces jazz, classical, folk and dream-pop influences, and features guest musicians on bass clarinet, soprano sax and guitar. Chloe March‘s stunning album Starlings & Crows has been featured in Mark Griffin's Best of 2020! This follows the album's inclusion in the Textura and Curveball best of 2020 lists. "A stunningly lovely blend of electronic and orchestral jewel tones, sensitive vocals and diaphanous compositions, this record envelops and holds you to its chest where you can feel its beating heart." - Mark Griffin The album is available now in CD, cassette and digital formats via Bandcamp, streaming via Spotify and is also available via all good online stores and streaming service. The music of Chloe March is available for licensing (film, tv, web and more) via Hidden Shoal. Chloe March's stunning album Starlings & Crows has been selected by the UK radio show Curve Ball as part of their Top 30 for 2020 (many thanks to Chris Evans as always). This follows on from the album's selection by the highly respected Textura as one of the 10 best albums of 2020. "However tempting it might be to cite artists such as Elizabeth Fraser and Tracey Thorn as reference points when speaking of March, Starlings & Crows-not for the first time-shows she's staked out her own artistic place. No one sounds quite like her, either vocally or musically." - Textura The album is available now in CD, cassette and digital formats via Bandcamp, streaming via Spotify and is also available via all good online stores and streaming service. The music of Chloe March is available for licensing (film, tv, web and more) via Hidden Shoal. Hidden Shoal is proud to announce the release of the stunning new Chloe March album Starlings & Crows. The album is available now in CD, cassette and digital formats via Bandcamp, streaming via Spotify and is also available via all good online stores and streaming service. The music of Chloe March is available for licensing (film, tv, web and more) via Hidden Shoal. For her fifth album, March drew inspiration from her early childhood in the Warwickshire countryside, nineteenth-century nature poet John Clare, and Lewis Carroll's fantastical Alice Through the Looking Glass. Throughout the album there's a palpable sense of wonder at the natural world, shot through with a deep concern for nature's vulnerability. Starlings & Crows resonates with notions of home on a macro and micro level. First single ‘To a Place' is an elegant waltz built around swooning strings and piano. ‘Landing 1969' sounds as astral as its subject matter would suggest, pulsing at the same tempo as Buzz Aldrin's heart-rate as Apollo 11 left earth. ‘Remember That Sky' is achingly emotive, showcasing March's innate talent for creating an atmosphere of intimacy without compromising compositional depth. Despite running to a succinct 38 minutes, Starlings & Crows is lush and expansive, while distilled to its crystalline essence. "The latest album by Chloe March is another heady trip through electro pop… The air is thick with atmosphere throughout and March is a masterful creator of mood… a beautiful sound somewhere between The Blue Nile and David Sylvian" - The Underground of Happiness "It was hard not to be charmed by the beauty of Chloë March's album, Starlings & Crows, which flew into sight in October last year. As a timely reminder of her precious talent, the English ambient-pop artiste has just shared a third single off the record, "All Things Good". Those very familiar with her work may recognise that the song is a version of "Calypso Wants" from her previous album, Blood-Red Spark, with extended lyrics and a different arrangement. March is a confessed fan of the process of reworking as a means of improving something or continuing to explore a theme. "All Things Good" falls firmly into the second category." "I first heard the unique and otherworldly music of Chloë March on Tom Ravenscroft's BBC 6 Music Show some 6 or 7 years ago. Little did I know that we would later become friends and we would both, in different roles, become stalwarts of Fresh On The Net. In that time she has continued to produce a consistent catalogue of beautifully-crafted songs and accomplished albums, recording for the Australian label Hidden Shoals. She has also repeatedly won the approval of our discerning readers who have regularly voted her tracks into the Fresh Faves. All Good Things is a prime example of what Chloë does so well. The piano develops in waves of alternating, fluid chords that make room for the kind of sumptuous dissonances rarely heard on a pop record. The other sounds swirl and saunter around it, while her soft but distinct and assured voice takes hold; a subtle and savoury main course, adorned by a plateful of carefully contrasting side dishes. The song is reflective, melancholy and tugs at the heartstrings. But never does it dip down into sugary sentiment, and it is all the more emotionally powerful as a result." "Chloë March has been variously described as an ambient-pop or electro-pop artist, but neither label truly satisfies. Yes, an ambient aspect is present in her atmospheric music, and, yes, she does use electronics to fashion her material, and, yes, there is a pop dimension in play when she favours concise, song-styled structures. Yet her intensely personalized sound helps make Starlings & Crows, March's fifth album, transcend singular categorizing. One ultimately less listens to this intoxicating collection than luxuriates in it. Operating out of her Warwickshire countryside home, the English artist crafts songs that might be better described as deeply aromatic mood pieces that derive their greatest distinguishing character from her unmistakable voice. Across eleven songs, March induces entrancement by coupling her free-floating, often multi-layered singing with instrumental backdrops that are pristine and keyboards-heavy. Her voice unfurls gracefully, with its vulnerable ache a stark counterpoint to the secure foundation of the instrumental design. An omnipresent tension emerges through that juxtaposition when the meticulous polish of the latter contrasts with the live-sounding spontaneity of the vocal performances. As the thirty-eight-minute recording plays, the listener is pulled deeply into its world, the effect intensified by the subject matter associated with the project. As the John Tenniel-like illustrations adorning the sleeve (and the title of the closing track "Looking Glass Lawn") suggest, March drew for inspiration from Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking Glass as well as the writings of nineteenth-century nature poet John Clare. Such literary references accentuate both the album's connections to the transporting dreamworlds of fantasy fiction and the sense of wonder engagement with the natural world calls forth. With a title alluding to the Apollo 11 mission, the opening song "Landing 1969" illustrates how critical her voice is to her music's impact when multiple vocal lines elegantly intertwine across a shimmering bed of pulsations. Here and elsewhere, March favours slow tempos, a choice that strengthens the music's dreamlike quality. Among the standouts is "Remember That Sky," which alchemizes her voice and a lilting backing into a swooning, intensely emotive elegy for things lost and unrecoverable. "Starlings and Crows, the new album by Chloë March, is an autumnal song cycle full of rich electronics, dark honeyed vocals and startling touches, like crystalline piano chord progressions and shimmering autoharp strums. It's richly atmospheric, full of nature imagery and Romantic (with a capital R) reveries. Everything note played or sung is placed with jewel-like precision. It's a song suite, but there are highlights, like the tentative piano ballad "All Things Good" or the cinematic blur of "To a Place," and "Remember That Sky" could be an Adult Alternative single. It reminds one of the misty electronic pastorals of Virginia Astley's "Hope in a Darkened Heart," though March has a plaintive alto compared to Astley's boy soprano tones. Other references: "The Sensual World," by Kate Bush, "Secrets of the Beehive" by David Sylvian or the 4AD era of folk singer Heidi Berry." "It is honestly a coincidence that two singer-songwriters who have blown me away this month share my name! But none of us are related! The ever-consistent Chloë March returned and stormed into the fresh faves with the haunting melancholy of To a place. Like all her best songs, it has an otherworldly quality with swirling synths and Chloë's fantastic alto voice delivering a melody that cuts my emotions to ribbons. I duly chose it to be my Vanishing Point track on Ming & Jon's Monday Night Ride Out show on Exile FM. Opinion from all those who commented was unanimous on the song's unique beauty. March has also been on my radar for a while and she returned with a stunning track called For the world which I also picked as a Vanishing Point track. We had the luxury of her performing it live in lockdown with just guitar and voice for Trust The Doc TV while being able to play the full production version on my radio show. The live version underlined the quality of her vocals and was compelling to watch and listen to. Look it up on Edition 9 of the TV show if you have not already done so. Then the single showed what could be done with such a well-written song, brooding and building from minimal start before hitting with a kind of coda at the end that is butterflies-inducing. March is currently studying at the amazing Institute of Contemporary Music Practice where I am likely to be delivering some lectures in the new future. She is in the right place for her considerable talent to be guided in a positive direction."

Toby Richardson

Job Titles:
  • Artist of the Week by Australian Music Online
Toby Richardson represents an important part of Perth music history via pivotal 90's band Mustang! who releasing the EP "Jacuzzi International Presents Mustang!" through Survival Records in 1994. His debut EP Golden Days is a 6 track lo-fi rock opus. With all the playful charm of Robert Pollard and the wirey choreography of Pavement, Richardson removes all pretension and carves his own special shape into the indie rock landscape. Hidden Shoal Recordings today announced the release of new EP The Stones And The Rabbits by Australian lo-fi rock magician Toby Richardson. Toby Richardson - The Stones And The Rabbits Toby Richardson - The Stones And The Rabbits Coinciding with the release of his first EP on Hidden Shoal Recordings, Toby Richardson was chosen as an artist of the week by Australian Music Online (http://www.amo.org.au) this week. Toby's EP "Golden Days" is available now from the HSR Store and in Itunes stores globally.