I'm unsure if the title is instructive, but this one-sided 45 does present a freaky sound collage of sorts.
Included are samples from a stereo demonstration record and an applauding crowd, plus snippets of fuzzed out
guitar jams, jangly pop and a girl sweetly singing over a freaky accompaniment. I'm, uh, smitten and intrigued.
Fred Mills-Magnet Magazine October/November1996
"And Hydroplanes "Atlantic" is a spooky, dreamy, female-led cross between
Mogwai and Galaxie 500-although not quite as good as that. Obviously. But you
can trance dance to it. Excellet.
Everett True-Melody Maker 2/8/97
"Much abstract female-led ambient mournfulness from Australia which recreates
the exact clammy sensation of sitting in a rowing boat in a lake in the middle
of a dense fog in a kangaroo costume. Actually, the costume isn't essential. The boat however, is."
Simon Williams-NME 16/8/97
"Oz dreamweavers Hydroplane give Mazzy Star a slow stroll for their money on this languid cover
of a song by one Pip Proud, a 60s hero from his native Down Under (it says here). The `Planes' own
couple of B-sides are similarly catatonic. Delirious stuff."
Record Collector 9/97
"Both sides sound very much like the rare Galaxie 500 songs where Naomi was allowed to sing.
On the A-side the singer claims (rather unconvincingly) to have been a stoker on a trans-Atlantic steamship,
the B-side is a melancholy lost-love song. Hey Joe is a microscopic instrumental with no references to shooting your old lady.
Released the same week as the Bitter Springs single, and there could hardly be two more dissimilar singles - both are traditional
indie pop, but this is serene and beautiful where the Bitter Springs single is energetic and lively."
Riverrun Singles Reviews 8/97
In these times when everybody are discussing Titanic's distastrous attempt to cross the Atlantic way back, it feels much safer
to get on a plane. Even if it's Hydroplane. On We Crossed The Atlantic they've chosen the atmospheric route, rather than the seaway.
The people behind this Hydroplane release used to be in a band called The Cat's Miaow, from Melbourne, Australia, and they have
released lots of music (7"s, cassette-albums, CDs) on different indie-labels (Toytown, Quiddity, Drive-In, Bus Stop, Harriet) over
the years since they formed in '92.
Hydroplane is extremely calm, with no drums, very discreet guitars, and spacy synths. Topped with a gorgeous female voice.
We Crossed... is indeed dreamy and way up high. On the flip-side we find the sparse Please Don't Go, much related to the a-side
when speaking of instrumentation and atmosphere. There is also a 3rd track, Hey Joe (no, it's not the Jimi H. song). Lasting
only 36 seconds, presenting some dark industrial, but quite relaxed noise. This is music for late nights, or early mornings,
and maybe just a foretaste of something more to come.
Luna Kafe e-zine
When I was Howard Hughes 7"
A-side's very much like the Wurlitzer Jukebox single, a placid love song, the other side's a sad yet hopeful
song about the end of an affair. Not quite as pure and stark as Low, but the same sort of sound.
Riverrun Singles Reviews
It used to be clear that Hydroplane was the dreamy, semi-ambient alter-ego of the Cat's Miaow, but the Cat's Miaow's
The Long Goodbye/Bliss Out EP, which consists of gauzy and ethereal reworkings of a handful of their pop songs, messed
up that sharp distinction. The complement would be Hydroplane doing jangly pop, but for this single of covers
(the Shapiros' "When I Was Howard Hughes" and the Creation's "If You Spoke to Me, I Wouldn't Know What to Say") they
stick to the old formula, bathing Cat's Miaow singer Kerrie Bolton's breathy vocals in sourceless reverberation and
murmurs of unidentified noise. Excellent music to sleep to, provided that you don't mind getting up to flip the record
every four minutes. 45, black.
The War Against Silence
Failed Adventure 7"
A glacial monochrome environment adorns the sleeve and from the opening echoes of spacious doomy sampled piano,as if heard through a network
of caverns, it seems eminently suitable for the sound, which reminds me of the lush avant-classicism of This Mortal Coil . However, Kerry's voice
could melt the most indestructible of icebergs at 50 paces and she's at her heartbreaking best on "Failed Adventure" and the B side "Now You Know
Everything There Is To Know" which relies on some eerily reverbed samples and a bassline reminiscent of "Higher Than The Sun". Breathtakingly beautiful.
Gayle-Boa Fanzine
Like the b-side of the previous single, both these songs have an almost creepy, nervous feeling beneath the apparently calm surface - neither song
is as poignant as If you spoke to me..., though. There's an album on Drive-In Records which has eighteen short tracks in similar vein to the first single.
Riverrun Singles Reviews
International exiles 7"
The latest single from Hydroplane has finally made its way down to Australia. As with all their releases, the latest three track 7-inch comes courtesy of an
overseas label, this time England's Liquefaction Empire. The title track is something of a departure from their previous releases with the addition of a drum machine
resulting in a sound not unlike the Underground Lovers. The familiar elements of Hydroplane are still there, beautifully languid vocals, organ and reverb drenched
drone ebbing and flowing throughout, but the addition of the drum machine really draws you in and has you swaying in moments. If you aren't up for dancing around
your bedroom, you'll be happy with the flip side, 'Bikewheel on a chair/Blackout', where Hydroplane revert back to their roles as hypnotists, swinging their ghostly
pop music in front of your ears.
Cameron-Slide Show Fanzine
Hydroplane CD
Film critic Rex Reed, in his inimitable manner, once described a movie as so boring, it would be the perfect cure for insomnia.
The debut LP by this Melbourne, Australia, trio is also the kind of thing you could put on to fall asleep to. It works better than
melatonin. In this case, though, these comments aren't meant as a criticism. While Hydroplane only performs at two speeds, slow and
slower, the band creates dreamy soundscapes that permeate the furthest regions of your subconscious. The female singer has one of
those cliched ethereal voices. The good thing is that you can actually understand what she's singing about. She provides Hydroplane
with its tranquil centerpiece. Such songs as "Reprise" and "Beloved Invader" seem to just drift, the band has seemingly bypassed
traditional song structure in favor of amorphous minimalism. "Send In the Clowns" is the band's most accessible-not to mention
traditional-song, a folk-like number accompanied by a soothing acoustic guitar and a blanket of hazy keyboards. However,
Hydroplane is hardly pioneering fresh musical terrain. Fans of Flying Saucer Attack and Slowdive/Mojave 3 will notice more
than a passing similarity in style and tone.
John Elsasser-Magnet Magazine Jan/Feb 1998
Hydroplane are the ambient dream-pop off-shoot of Aussie indie group the Cat's Miaow. The Cat's Miaow write mostly uptempo, jangling pop songs,
but here they do away with any semblance of tempo and are content to drift peacefully along on lush beds of synths and guitars. The songs are nice
and quiet, the female vocals are melancholy, hushed, and remarkably for an indie-pop group, mostly in tune. The overall feel is that of sleepwalking
through a field of really soft things; tissue, clouds, pillows. In fact one sometimes wishes for a hook or a change in dynamics to break through
the cotton-candy and grab the listener, but it never happens. Nevertheless, this is a well-played, pleasant sounding record. If you are looking
for soothing and calm indie pop, you could do a lot worse.
Timothy Sendra-All Music Guide
Hope against hope CD/LP
On Hope Against Hope, Melbourne, Australia's Hydroplane gently skims the placid surface of unconsciousness.
These 10 tracks of wistful ambiance ooze stunning, lo-fi atmospherics, formed from a hypnotic combination of gorgeous, languid
guitars, spaced-out synthesizers and the occasional woozy drum loop. On "How Can You Tell Me," vocalist Kerrie solemnly sings,
"Whisper to me/so only I can hear" over sparse, wandering soundscapes. Her voice, which rarely ever rises above a murmur, is
as soothing as the gentle hum of a distant plane propeller. And the wonderfully spooky instrumentals "Station To Station" and
"Too Far Out" would be appropriate additions to any sci-fi thriller soundtrack. Hydroplanes are known to skim surfaces,
but this model soars many miles above the nearest cloud.
Bill Konig -CMJ New Music Report, Issue: 647 - Dec 20, 1999
"Hope Against Hope", el nuevo trabajo de los australianos HYDROPLANE (que ya sacaron un single en el Club Elefant),
es un disco especial, por encima de momentos o modas arrolladoras. Retomando casi con fervor religioso influencias privilegiadas
(Velvet Underground, Galaxie 500, Mazzy Star), estos vecinos en nuestras antípodas crean un muro hipnótico de seda y belleza,
no tanto en los instrumentales, la parte más orgánica de su sonido, como en esas preciosas y austeras elegías cantadas ("Follow",
"Grand central", "Donÿt you know", "Something Iÿve got to tell you") con una evanescencia pasmosa, con un latir espaciado, casi paralizado.
Atmósfera lo-fi con ciertos detalles electrónicos en sus loops misteriosos y letras que oran sobre promesas rotas y deseos irrealizables,
confieren a "Hope Against Hope" un espectro oscuro pero tangible, gracias a una voz femenina sin nombre (escasez de créditos) pero con toda
el alma en cada segundo de su cantar. Soberbio, como el primer disco de Mojave 3 electrocutandose a baja tensión. Modesto,
pero inmarchitable, imperecedero.
Por Jesús Castillo - informativos.net November 1999
After a string of heart wrenchingly beautiful singles on a host of excellent labels: Wurlitzer, Elefant, Drive In, finally comes the
follow up to Hydroplanes 1997 critically acclaimed self titled album featuring an identical line-up, bar one, to near legendary underground
popsters the Cats Miaow. Although 'hope against hope' retains some of the melodic popshine, shifting loops and muted electronics of
Hydroplanes debut album, it a more home spun affair. Hydroplane were once naively branded space-rock. This release is more like effortless,
dreamfolk, lunar balladry pop shenanigans.
Pennyblack Music
This is a beautiful album: eerie pop music that washes over you in waves of reverb drenched atmospherics. Like the soundtrack to a David Lynch film,
'Hope against Hope' delivers music of simplistic beauty that conjures up a sense of mystery that implies something a little more sinister below the surface.
Hydroplane surround themselves with as much mystery as the music they create with liner notes kept to a minimum and none of the band credited on the sleeve.
While being virtually unknown in Australia, they have already released one album and a series of 7-inch singles on independent labels in the UK, USA and
Spain too much critical acclaim. The ten tracks on 'Hope against Hope' are split between instruments and melancholic love songs but all the while maintaining
the same sense of mood. The female vocals are sweetly ethereal and waver with vulnerability when delivering honest and heartfelt lyrics.
To have a vocalist of this quality in a band, it would be hard to show enough restraint to forgo them in favour of instrumentals but restraint is a quality
that ensures Hydroplane's originality. The standout track is 'Grand Central', lifted just a little higher than the rest with its drum machine and subtle electronics.
However, the real strength of this album is in its consistency, both of quality and aesthetic, and should be done justice with an uninterrupted listen.
The artwork is fantastic and is available on CD and wonderful 12" vinyl.
Cameron - ozmusicproject.net
Hydroplane come on soft with a melody straight out of a Nick Cave song-"...O Lucy, can you hear me, when I cry and cry and cry..." However, the similarity to
Mr.Cave does stop there. Hope Against Hope is just under 35 minutes of really beautiful synthesized compression and pristine vocals, benign lyrics, soft strummed guitar.
Clear resonance and wafting space sounds make up a collection of completely non-challenging songs just this short of being boring. Really it is all too pretty to be dull,
perfect date music.
Where these songs fall into being simple, they don't fall too far, though I did examine the labeling to see if Nutrasweet was on the ingredients list. It wasn't, and
not much other information is either. I find listening to this CD somewhere in between Stereolab and Julie Cruise - floaty, airy, spacey, nice. Surely more interesting
than the former, and less gossamer than the next. There is so much bittersweet prettiness here that this could be labeled girly music, but I can easily imagine a boy or
two I know nursing heartwounds with Hydroplane soundtracks. One song, "Station to Station" could possibly be some sort of Bowie tribute, or it might just be a nice little
exercise on the wave generator. Whatever the case, it does seem to bring some welcome relief to the far too perfect singing on every other song except "Summer without sun",
and "Too far out". And the singing is perfect, so much so that I don't imagine Ms.Hydroplane needing a lot of engineering or effects on her lilting voice; it is all so open
and clear and immodest.
Everything on Hope Against Hope is completely balanced and blended, very easy to listen to, or play in the background. The artists involved are obviously well trained or
well skilled or at least well talented. I don't get the feeling the Hope Against Hope causes anyone a stretch, but it also won't cause too many yawns.
Lilly2000-
Freq
The Cat's Miaow family of bands - The Cat's Miaow, Bart & Friends and Hydroplane - are folk from Melbourne making music much more well know by indie-pop fans on overseas shores.
Hydroplane are the most downbeat of the trio, and on Hope against Hope they create a cinematic ambient-pop mood, similar to the sounds the Cat's Miaow invoked on their contribution
to the San Francisco label Darla's renowned 'Bliss out' series, The Long Goodbye (volume 14).
Hope against Hope finds a pair of Cat's Miaow cats - uncredited on the album - mixing glowing guitars, looming keyboards and winsome vocals to charming effect. It's an amiable,
ambling kind of record, eliciting tissuey environs with its reverb heavy sounds.
With no drums and precious use of beats, Hydroplane often set pop-songs in the midst of drones, cheery vocal lines nestling amidst layers of keyboards, with colouring guitars
dressed around the edges of the implied rhythms. Sometimes that makes the record seem like a rather distant affair, removed from the listener, without the provocative abstractions
that make 'difficult' records seem particularly close. That said, if the mood is right, and the yen to hear the softest, drifting-est of pop strikes, Hope against Hope is a particularly
sweet listen.
Anthony Carew - Beat magazine
The Sound of Changing Places CD/LP
Hydroplane is singer Kerrie Bolton and electronics wizard Andrew Withycombe, two Australians who also make music as Cat's Miaow. The music they make on The Sound of Changing Places
is dreamy and electronic, sort of like what you'd get if Sarah Cracknell from Saint Etienne decided to do a record with Marc Bianchi of Her Space Holiday. The disc bounces back and forth between
tunes like "Bouncing Ball" and "International Exiles", with insinuating looped drumbeats and Bolton's cool, detached vocals slithering over the top, and songs like the instrumental "Closing In", which feature more
ambient washes of sound. Some of the more charming songs are based on acoustic guitar; the closer, "World Without You", for instance, features some nice heartsick crooning by Bolton, and the lyric "When you go,
I feel like I should move too/There's so little appeal in a world without you." Like some of Saint Etienne's best work, this disc would make a great soundtrack for your next cocktail party - especially if you
invited only friends who had just had their hearts broken, and served up doses of valium with the gin and tonics.
Very soft and sparse atmospheric pop music with slightly eerie electronics. The press release that accompanied this CD probably best sums up this band's sound by describing it as "a more experimental version of Saint Etienne."
Hydroplane is the duo of Kerrie Bolton (vocals) and Andrew Withycombe (electronics). One is almost tempted to refer to this as lo-fi electronic music because Mr. Withycombe exercises such extreme restraint in his arrangements.
Whereas your average modern day electronic composer layers and layers their music to the point of overkill, this fellow does the exact opposite. This approach leaves these tunes sounding naked and, at times, as if they were not
completed. Ms. Bolton's breathy, distant vocals fit perfectly. After hearing too many overproduced artists, we find the music of Hydroplane to be a refreshing change. There are no hits here, but rather gentle slices of experimental
art... (Rating: 4) = VERY GOOD
An on-again, off-again, on-again Australian project of members of Cat's Miaow & Huon, landing perfectly in its attempt to create indie pop with intimate trippy, and ambient leanings with a smattering of dancefloor potential.
If you're a fan of the wooziness projected by bands like Pram, Broadcast, and Dymaxion, Hydroplane's assertion of minimalism, invention, and gorgeous textures (especially those offered by the female vocalist Kerrie), this should satisfy.
It's hard not to love the Cat's Miaow's fragile, windswept pop miniatures, but the band's ambient space pop alter ego, Hydroplane, is a different animal altogether. Most reminiscent of early Stereolab, particularly in vocalist Kerrie Bolton's
similarities to Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier, their ice-cool soundscapes fail to make much of an emotional impact, a disconnect the Cat's Miaow never suffers. For The Sound of Changing Places, Bolton and partner Andrew Withycombe largely forsake
the sweet melodicism of their past efforts; only "International Exiles," not coincidentally dedicated to Cat's Miaow-mate Bart, lodges in the memory without prolonged exposure, instead favoring weightless, sterile electronic bleeps and drones
that only occasionally belie their humanity. The record's highlights, "Kangaroo and Map" and "World Without You," combine analog buzzing with an acoustic guitar lead to appealingly recall the Cat's Miaow's finest efforts - they're ones to grow on. Australian indie pop duo overcomes national iconography of strange sandwich spread, crocodile
wrestlers, and foofy-haired rockers with expansive droning organ and
intensely pretty female vocals. As members of The Cat's Miaow, Kerrie Bolton and Andrew Withycombe help create pretty, smart pop music. With their other band Hydroplane, they do the same, but use an expanded palette of styles and sounds. The key difference is electronics over conventional instruments, with Withycombe using an apparent assortment of unspecified electronic devices to build a deep array of unique, layered musical arrangements to support Bolton's elegant and intimate crooner's voice. Hydroplane's first two albums, one self-titled and one called Hope Against Hope, introduced their sound as ambient pop: catchy but relaxed melodic tunes set in carefully crafted dreamy atmospheres. With their third album The Sound of Changing Places, the duo pushes their sound in all sorts of new directions, emphasizing playful experimentation while still giving appropriate attention to pop songcraft.
j-s-Splendid e-zine
babysue.com
Brian Turner - wfmu
Jason Ankeny - All Music Guide
Dan Strachota - The forgotten Top 10: The best records of 2001 that you won't see on anyone else's list
sfweekly.com
The electronic soundscapes on The Sound of Changing Places take all sorts of forms. "Merry-go-round" opens the album in a dreamy swirl, yet that sound is dressed up, down and in every other direction before the album closes. The second track, "Farmer's boys flexi disc" is similar in tone to the first track but adds funky beats and some subtle touches, like phonograph fuzz that echoes the title's reference to a flexi disc. "We make all the rules, and we're the ones who break them / Tonight I know it's only up to us," Bolton sings, giving voice to the anything-goes, DIY air that the group has. Free creation is what's going on here, and at every step it works brilliantly, making the album a treasure filled with many types of aural pleasures.
The variety and sheer inventiveness of the music gives the album an otherworldly feel at times. That theme of transcending the normal is touched on lyrically as well, as on "Bouncing Ball", with the chorus "You're going to miss you / How is the air up there?" Movement and boundary-crossing is in a sense what the whole album centers on. From the album title and its cover art -- a photo of a kite flying high above a city park, with a skyline of skyscrapers in the background -- to the Quicktime video included as a bonus, chronicling a train trip through Melbourne (to a song that's not otherwise included on the CD, "Little Star Shine on Us Tonight", transportation is everywhere. That theme is captured in romantic, poetic terms on the ballad "Kangaroo and Map", where Bolton sings, "Someday I will call and lead you far away / Over hills and mountain ranges / Maybe follow the sun."
Hydroplane's electronic pop creations at times travel into funky territory that would make them dance-floor-ready, especially on "Embassy Cafe", an energetic pop tour through a night on the town. That track also has affairs of the heart at its core. Love, loneliness, infatuation -- these themes pop up on just about every great pop record ever made, and The Sound of Changing Places is no exception. The last two songs, "Cry My Heart" and "World Without You," are especially touching portraits of love, giving the album a sweetness to match its musical dexterity. By the album's end, Hydoplane have traveled through myriad musical worlds, but they haven't forgotten to map the human heart, either.
Dave Heaton -
popmatters.com
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