The Australian Music Label, Hidden Shoal Recordings, Signs German outfit, Sankt Otten.

The Australian digital music label, Hidden Shoal Recordings, today announced the signing of the won-derful German outfit, Sankt Otten.

Touted by the German music press as the “German Portishead”, Sankt Otten cover a far broader ground than their English trip hop brethren. Traversing the realm of noirish cinematic pop Sankt Otten draw inspiration from such musical inventors as - Morricone, Barry, Talk Talk - and the modern adaptors - Portishead, Bohren und der Club of Gore, David Holmes.

Hidden Shoal Recordings is proud to release Sankt Otten’s latest masterpiece, “Wir können ja Freunde bleiben” (Let’s Remain Friends), an intensely orchestrated, creamily thick bed of electronic sound-scapes, slow-motion drums and the twanging noir guitars of Oliver Klemm (of “Pendikel” fame), winding through the recordings like a thin red line. If Morricone collaborated with Talk Talk, the result would sound something like this.

The band began life in Germany, 1999 and over the ensuing period released two albums on the German electronic label Eleganz Records.

After their brilliant and wonderfully received debut on Eleganz - the 12” vinyl “Stille Tage im Klischee” (Quiet Days in the Cliché - playing with the title of Henry Millers studies on bored hedonism), the band followed up with the equally impressive “Eine kleine Traurigkeit” (A Small Sadness). Sankt Otten then underwent several changes: from the singer/songwriter duo to an electronic solo project, of which the Retinascan 3” remixCD-R “Zuhause fühle ich mich wie ein Tourist” (At Home I Feel Like a Tourist) pays testament to the band’s lineup of today. Despite the shifting personnel, Sankt Otten’s musical
trajectory has only grown all the stronger for it with Stephan Otten, head and hands of the project, con-stantly directing the growth and evolution of the band’s musical output. With “Wir können ja Freunde bleiben” Sankt Otten collects the pearls of their work from the years 2000 to 2005.

“Wir können ja Freunde bleiben” is due for release through Hidden Shoal Recordings in January 2007. The album’s first single, “Fremdenzimmer” will be released December 6th, 2006.

Hidden Shoal Recordings is an Australian based independent digital music label. The label is a unique marriage of contemporary distribution, with traditional indie label values and, most importantly, a won-derful catalogue of releases.

Label Site: http://music.hiddenshoal.com
HSR Store: http://agora.hiddenshoal.com