Wes Willenbring’s “Close, But Not Too Close” Official Release

Nov. 11, 2009 - PRLog -- San Francisco, USA; Perth, Australia. Hidden Shoal Recordings is proud to announce the official release of the eagerly awaited sophomore album by American post-ambient craftsman Wes Willenbring.

Close, But Not Too Close sees Willenbring develop on the gorgeous palette of tones explored on acclaimed debut Somewhere, Someone Else. As with Willenbring’s debut, Close, But Not Too Close is all about time in both it’s broadest and most discrete sense. There is a deliberation present in it’s composition that makes for a level of engagement far beyond any easy notion of what ambient music is or should be.

The album opens with the elegiac organ drones of ‘I’m Looking Forward To Your Funeral’, immediately setting the scene for this shadow filled, introspective, eight-song opus. The track showcases Willenbring’s masterful balance of passage and destination. The wonderfully received single ‘Oh, Most’ is submerged in icy washes of guitar, under which piano and bass meet in a rhythmic valium struggle. A plaintive cyclical piano line leads ‘My Ghostly Fingers’ before being joined by vacillating Mellotron flute lines as if Satie had fallen to dream. The classical guitar lines in ‘The Burrow’ literally dig into your subconscious, from where a warm yet unearthly Mellotron acts as a kind of embrocation.

‘For All The Strays’ would have sounded perfectly at home on Willenbring’s debut with it’s dry, pure electric guitar tones, delicately placed piano chords in the foreground and smears of drone threatening in the distance. This bridging of melody and texture, of form and formlessness, time and time again draws the listener into territory that is at once unknown yet intimately familiar – a place that is as marked by notions of transformation as it is by melancholy.

“Absolutely gorgeous. Dreamy dark meandering melancholia for fans of Stars Of The Lid, Eluvium, Dead Texan, Tim Hecker, Godspeed and other purveyors of darkly dramatic, abstract moody minimalism” – Aquarius Records on Somewhere Someone Else

Willenbring’s minimalist atmospheres and songs draw from the sounds and moods of Leonard Cohen, Erik Satie, Dirty Three, and Brian Eno, to the visuals of auteurs such as Antonioni, Jean-Pierre Melville and Eric Rohmer. Created using the primary elements of piano and guitar, the sounds are then disassembled, reconstructed and manipulated to create music that is both visceral and expressive.

Close, But Not Too Close is now available on CD and in all digital formats (including lossless). The CD is distributed through n5Mailorder in the US, Asia and Europe and through Hidden Shoal Distribution in Australia. Check the Hidden Shoal Store for all availability info.

Hidden Shoal Recordings is an Australia-based independent music label that has earned a reputation for releasing exciting and engaging new independent music that is not bound by genre or style. Hidden Shoal Recordings was chosen as one of the top 10 favourite labels of 2007 by Textura magazine and has been dubbed “This generation’s 4AD” by prominent New York radio host DJ Mojo.

Label Site: http://music.hiddenshoal.com
Label Store: http://agora.hiddenshoal.com
Wes Willenbring: http://www.weswillenbring.com

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Hidden Shoal Recordings is an Australia-based music label that has earned a reputation for releasing engaging new music that is not bound by genre or style. The label has been dubbed “This generation’s 4AD” by prominent New York radio host DJ Mojo.