THE LOWLAND HUNDRED

The Lowland Hundred is the Aberystwyth-based duo of Paul Newland and Tim Noble. Their recently released, self-titled third album on Exotic Pylon Records completes a loose trilogy of albums that conceptually explore a spectral and fading assortment of memories, landscapes and communities - a warm melancholia rooted around a psychogeographical exploration of the sublime and picturesque landscape of Mid Wales. With their extended, subtle and complex approach to song structures and Newland’s astonishing voice previous albums Under Cambrian Sky and Adit have drawn comparison to Talk Talk, Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers amongst others. The haunted middle-aged doubt of The Blue Nile seems just as relevant and the duo’s hugely affecting, impressionistic landscape-saturated sound links back to an older tradition of composers such as Debussy and Ravel.

"What emerges is a sublime combining of melody and musique concrete, of the traditional and the experimental, a collision of careful craft and surrendering to chance. Listen closely, and the songs rise up, like distant bells from beneath the empty sea." - The Quietus, review of Under Cambrian Sky

HALLOCK HILL

Hallock Hill is New York City based musician Tom Lecky. He employs a variety of techniques on both electric and acoustic instruments to reveal varying perspectives–building tracks that weave and intersect, confide and disagree with one another in turns, and obliquely repeat in ways that reflect the process of thought and memory. A typical Hallock Hill piece seeks the qualities of sculpture, an architecture of space within time.

Hallock Hill has released The Union (2011, Hundred Acre Recordings), There He Unforeseen (2011, private press) and A Hem of Evening (2012, MIE Music, with the vinyl reissue of The Union). Hallock Hill’s fourth album, Kosloff Mansion, a collaboration with The Lowland Hundred’s Tim Noble, was released in April this year on Hundred Acre Recordings.

"The Union shows that wistful emotions and fond memories can be as deep and complex as darker themes. It’s my favorite solo acoustic album of the year so far, and if it indicates a new direction for this kind of music. I think Fahey would approve." - Marc Masters, “Beyond Fahey,” The Out-Door, Pitchfork.