Willem Gator

Biography

Willem Gator is Giuseppe Musmeci, self-taught composer, guitarist, electronic musician and member of the Italian post-rock outfit HC-B. Musmeci’s rich background in electronic music production and keen sense of texture sees him creating highly distinctive music under his Willem Gator moniker: “My music is photography of a time, of the people I met and the emotion they gave to me.” Willem Gator has performed throughout Europe, sharing the stage with musicians such as FM Einhet (Einsturzende Neubauten), Flying Luttenbachers, Unsane, DJ Spooky, Pansonic, Nobokazu Takemura, U-Cef, Battles and Art Brut.

News

• Willem Gator “Fragments Vol. 1” EP Out Now!

  Hidden Shoal is excited to announce the release of  Fragments Vol. 1, the new EP  from Italian electronic producer Willem Gator. The EP is available now via Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon and most other online stores. The music of Willem Gator is available for licensing (film, tv, web and more) via Hidden Shoal.

  On his new EP as Willem Gator, Giuseppe Musmeci juxtaposes the glimmering tones of Asian stringed instruments against haunting vocal samples, shimmering guitar loops and pounding drum refrains. ‘Fall of Saigon’, ‘Voice of Korea’ and ‘Korean Shaman Exorcist’ all employ these instrumental ingredients to mesmerising effect. At the EP’s heart lies the glowering, reflective ‘Noodles Western’, built around piano, synth strings and pattering cymbals. Closing track ‘Pina’ sees Musmeci’s role in post-rock band HC-B brought to the fore, with drums that would sit right at home on instrumental hip-hop, offset by spiralling instrumental textures.

  “an eclectic album of epic melancholic electronica, poised between post rock and clubbing sonority, full of dreamy musical constructions” – Wicked Style on Locked-In Syndrome

  Willem Gator is Giuseppe Musmeci, self-taught composer, guitarist, electronic musician and member of the Italian post-rock outfit HC-B. Musmeci’s rich background in electronic music production and keen sense of texture sees him creating highly distinctive music. Willem Gator has performed throughout Europe, sharing the stage with musicians such as FM Einhet (Einsturzende Neubauten), Flying Luttenbachers, Unsane, DJ Spooky, Pansonic, Nobokazu Takemura, U-Cef, Battles and Art Brut.

   

  Hidden Shoal · Willem Gator – Pina
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• New Willem Gator Single, EP in February!

  ‘Fall of Saigon’ is the hypnotic first single lifted from Fragments, the forthcoming EP  from Italian electronic producer Willem Gator. The track is available to stream via SoundCloud along with it’s accompanying music video on YouTube.  Fragments will see release on the 26^th of February through Hidden Shoal.

  On his new EP as Willem Gator, Giuseppe Musmeci juxtaposes the glimmering tones of Asian stringed instruments against haunting vocal samples, shimmering guitar loops and pounding drum refrains. ‘Fall of Saigon’, ‘Voice of Korea’ and ‘Korean Shaman Exorcist’ all employ these instrumental ingredients to mesmerising effect. At the EP’s heart lies the glowering, reflective ‘Noodles Western’, built around piano, synth strings and pattering cymbals. Closing track ‘Pina’ sees Musmeci’s role in post-rock band HC-B brought to the fore, with drums that would sit right at home on instrumental hip-hop, offset by spiralling instrumental textures.

  “an eclectic album of epic melancholic electronica, poised between post rock and clubbing sonority, full of dreamy musical constructions” – Wicked Style on Locked-In Syndrome

  Willem Gator is Giuseppe Musmeci, self-taught composer, guitarist, electronic musician and member of the Italian post-rock outfit HC-B. Musmeci’s rich background in electronic music production and keen sense of texture sees him creating highly distinctive music. Willem Gator has performed throughout Europe, sharing the stage with musicians such as FM Einhet (Einsturzende Neubauten), Flying Luttenbachers, Unsane, DJ Spooky, Pansonic, Nobokazu Takemura, U-Cef, Battles and Art Brut.

  The music of Willem Gator is available for licensing (film, tv, web and more) via Hidden Shoal.
  

  Hidden Shoal · Willem Gator – Fall Of Saigon
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• Hidden Shoal in Textura’s Ten Favourite Labels of 2018 List!

  Hidden Shoal is incredibly honoured to have been selected as one of Textura’s Ten Favourite Labels of 2018. Textura is, in our opinion, the premiere new music magazine and favourite of the label team for unearthing and exposing new and exciting new music. This is the second time Hidden Shoal has been selected in Textura’s best labels list and as always we are nestled against some other very special labels, all of who you should check out.

  Now for a very brief and unnecessary acceptance speech – we are nothing without our incredible roster of artists, who continually amaze, inspire and surprise us. Thank you all!

   

   

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• Hidden Shoal Artists Featured on Rudy Maxa Soundtrack

  The new episode from the award winning Rudy Maxa’s World is airing tonight on PBS. Why should you care about this Emmy award winning tv show? Besides being a brilliant travel show that uses food and local producers to tell it’s stories, it also features music licensed by Hidden Shoal from Willem Gator, Apricot Rail, PERTH and Kryshe. We also have a number of tracks featured on previous and future episodes, so keep your eyes out! Read more about the show here.

  Hidden Shoal has an incredible catalogue of music available for licensing. Read more about our services here.

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• Willem Gator’s “Locked-In Syndrome” Out Now!

  We’re very excited to present Locked-In Syndrome, the fifth album by Italian electronic producer Willem Gator (also of Italian post rock behemoth HC-B). The album is available now via Bandcamp and all good 3rd party stores including iTunes and Spotify. Also check out the awesome music video by Riccardo Napoli from Sunthetic (and HC-B) for first single ‘Closer’.

  “The result is an experience that is eminently danceable but deeply melancholic. It transmits hedonism and detachment. Electronic anthems scale the musical skies while probing the emotional lows.”” – Escafandrista on Locked In Syndrome
  

  Across its concise 40-minute run-time, Locked-In Syndrome deploys its beats and synths for maximum impact, creating an eminently danceable yet deeply melancholic experience. Conveying the overwhelming experience of being at a hedonistic celebration and feeling profoundly detached and alone, these electronic paeans to dislocation scale the musical skies while plumbing the emotional lows.

  Stretching out across six-plus minutes, tracks like ‘Umbrella Revolution’ and ‘AF 16’ have a deeply satisfying momentum, carrying the listener towards a shadowy, unknown destination. Indeed, for Willem Gator, the journey is the destination – a lonely ride through night-time streets, where bright lights promise much and deliver nothing… The album features stunning artwork by English collage artist and musician Ashley Reaks.

  As with all Hidden Shoal releases, Willem Gator’s music is available for licensing. Contact us for more details.
  

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• New Willem Gator Single From Forthcoming Album!

  ‘Closer’ is the first taste of the sublime Locked-In Syndrome, the fifth album by Italian electronic producer Willem Gator (also of Italian post rock behemoth HC-B). Check out the awesome music video by Riccardo Napoli from Sunthetic (and HC-B) and stream the track ahead of the album release on the 1^st of December.

  “Willem Gator focuses on the larger impact. Letting each song gradually increase in emotional intensity helping it incorporate both rock and electronic aspects.” – Beach Slot

  Across its concise 40-minute run-time, Locked-In Syndrome deploys its beats and synths for maximum impact, creating an eminently danceable yet deeply melancholic experience. Conveying the overwhelming experience of being at a hedonistic celebration and feeling profoundly detached and alone, these electronic paeans to dislocation scale the musical skies while plumbing the emotional lows. The album features stunning artwork by English collage artist and musician Ashley Reaks.

  As with all Hidden Shoal releases, this beautiful song is available for licensing. Contact us for more details.

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• Eat Your Friends: A Hidden Shoal 10th Anniversary Compilation

  Hidden Shoal is excited to end the celebration of its 10th year of existence with the new compilation album Eat Your Friends, comprising remixes and covers of Hidden Shoal artists, by Hidden Shoal artists. This freely downloadable album not only showcases the wealth of original music released through Hidden Shoal, but also the creative ingenuity and deft musical touch of the remixers and cover artists.

  From searing solar-flared adaptations to delicately reconstructed covers, deep space jam reworkings, and shimmering ambient tapestries, Eat Your Friends reimagines the Hidden Shoal discography in new and beautiful ways, playing to all the strengths of the roster’s dizzying array of talent.

  Includes remixes and covers by: Antonymes, Arc Lab, Glanko, Wayne Harriss, Liminal Drifter, Makee, Chloe March, Markus Mehr, Erik Nilsson, REW<<, Slow Dancing Society, Tin Manzano, Willem Gator, and Zealous Chang  of music by: Arc Lab, Brother Earth, Cheekbone, City of Satellites, Medard Fischer, Gilded, Glanko & Daniel Bailey, Kryshe, Memorybell, Erik Nilsson, perth, Slow Dancing Society, Tangled Star, Umpire, and Zealous Chang.

  Eat Your Friends is available now as a free download via Bandcamp and is also streamable via SoundCloud. Listen and then throw yourself into the wormhole as you explore the originals and more work by the remixers and cover artists.  For all the filmmakers, games designers and others in need of engaging music, don’t forget that all tracks in our catalogue are available for licensing (film, tv, games, compilations etc).

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• Hidden Shoal is 10!

  Hidden Shoal is extremely excited to be celebrating its 10th birthday this month. It’s hard to believe that back in May 2006, Perth-based musicians Cam Merton, Stuart Medley and Malcolm Riddoch began Hidden Shoal Recordings as a means to put out releases by local artists. Tim Clarke, based in Melbourne, joined the team in 2007. Hidden Shoal has since gone on to become a much-loved independent label and publisher, releasing over 120 albums from a diverse range of international artists and licensing music from its catalogue across film, tv, web and compilation.

  Stay tuned for special anniversary announcements in the coming months!

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• Giuseppe Musmeci of HC-B and Willem Gator Interview at Tomatrax

  For those that missed it, check out this wonderful interview with Giuseppe Musmeci of HC-B and Willem Gator at Tomatrax late last year. Giuseppe is currently finalising the next Willem Gator album so keep your ears peeled for more news on that. It’s going to be something special!
  

   
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• Three Questions With Giuseppe Musmeci (aka Willem Gator)

  Giuseppe Musmeci is a man of many talents. He’s a self-taught composer, guitarist, electronic musician and member of the Italian post-rock outfit HC-B. His work under the Willem Gator moniker is a beautiful tapestry of atmospheric down-tempo, big basslines and oriental instrumentation, often counterpointed by urgent and angular beat-driven explorations. He creates music that is not only about ‘place’, but also deeply embedded in its own place of construction and composition. His pivotal 2011 album Hong Kong Express is testament to this approach, composed while the artist lived in a ‘cubby hole’ apartment in Kowloon.

  So let’s hand it over to Giuseppe as we ask him to pull three questions out of the bag…

  Who is your dream collaborator?

  Definitely Peter Hook from Joy Division-New Order!

  Describe your musical career in 6 words or less.

  Traveling, observe, breathe, absorb and release …

  If you were writing a soundtrack/score, what director would you most want to work with?

  David Lynch

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Reviews

• Willem Gator “Locked in Syndrome” Reviewed at Echoes and Dust

  “There’s something inherently moving when it comes to electronic music. It’s not obvious and at times the underlying theme is more serious than the overlying tone of the music leads the listener to believe. This is the case with the last release by Italian electronic producer, Willem Gator entitled Locked-In Syndrome.

  The album contains six tracks that come in at almost 40 minutes of listening pleasure. As stated in the write-up for this release by Hidden Shoal independent music label, “Indeed, for Willem Gator, the journey is the destination – a lonely ride through night-time streets, where bright lights promise much and deliver nothing…”. I felt that sentiment at times throughout some of the tracks, more obvious with tracks such as ‘Standing on a street corner waiting for no one is power’ with its disconnected piano piece at the beginning of the track and synth lament in behind. The beat pushes the listener through until a change at the 1:32 mark brings continuity. The track’s funky beat and many layers make this a great track to start the album.

  There are three tracks that really stood out for me on this album. ‘Af 16’, ‘Umbrella Revolution’ and ‘Closer’. Rather than write about all of the tracks, I will focus on these three for the rest of this review.

  ‘Af 16’, brings an awesome synth start with a great panning effect. It’s like fireworks between the ears. Love the synth swells throughout. The beat is driving and intense. Wait for the change at around the 3:58 mark. For me, this track is a mix of 65daysofstatic and Boards of Canada.

  The beat in ‘Umbrella Revolution’ reverberates and I find the effect cavernous, it’s incredible. Great synth layers again, the track really makes you move. A pause in the track made me think it was over, but not so. It comes back with a different beat. More of a wet tone effect and a low growl. Great changes in this track.

  ‘Closer’ is a favourite for its driving beat and cool synth layers. This track also introduced a bit of guitar which definitely added another dimension to the track. The track is rich and full. A great way to end the album. I could listen to this track all day.

  If you are in need of some synth and cool beats in your life, this is your album.”

  – Echoes and Dust

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• Willem Gator “Locked-In Syndrome” Reviewed at Wicked Style

  [Translated from the original Italian via Google]

  “From the Italian producer Willem Gator comes an eclectic album of epic melancholic electronica, poised between post rock and clubbing sonority, full of dreamy musical constructions, along six different tracks, for a total of 40 minutes, modulating softly and with cinematic digressions , in now more eclectic passages, at other times more tense and eccentric, always with a strong emotional impact. Giuseppe Musmeci, this is the name of the musician’s registry, he chose for the Locked-In Syndrome project the Hidden Shoal, an independent Australian label that has focused its work on experimenters and bands not related to a specific genre. The result is interesting and worthy of careful listening.”

  – Wicked Style

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• Willem Gator “Locked-In Syndrome” Reviewed at Global Music Magazine

  [Translated from the original German via Google.]

  “Carried by a strong rhythmic foundation and steeped in audacious sounds, it is possible to describe the new album by the Italian Giuseppe Musmeci, who, as author, however, states the project Willem Gator.

  He has baptized his work “Locked-In Syndrome”. Probably because his music sounds like it’s breaking out of the corset of the musical mainstream. Obviously, Willem Gator refuses to swim, copy, and search for what matters best. Occasionally, his beats and synth sounds sound as if he wants to prove that noncomformance can lead to catchy music.

  With catchy music we do not mean pop music, so nothing that immediately and immediately like. Everything, just do not adapt, is more the motto of the Italian. He does not move so much offside with his pulsating drum loops and feverish sequencer lines. So far from the fact that she quickly gets in the ear, his music is not at all. Rather, only a small thing is missing. This charming game, as if to say that I could, if I wanted, mastered Giuseppe Musmeci perfectly.

  So he drives his fun for almost 40 minutes. As a listener, you are in the end sweaty about the merciless force of this music. When game consoles dance to steamrams, it must sound like “Locked-In Syndrome”. Wow!”

  – Global Music Magazine

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• Willem Gator ‘Closer’ Reviewed at Escafandrista

  [Translated from the Spanish via Google]

  “Closer is the first sample of the Sublime Locked-In Syndrome , the fifth album by Italian electronic producer Willem Gator .The artist creates a combination of downtempo beats, bass lines and a multitude of oriental and orchestral instruments. It focuses on each song gradually increasing in emotional intensity, helping to incorporate both rock and electronic aspects. The result is an experience that is eminently danceable but deeply melancholic. It transmits hedonism and detachment. Electronic anthems scale the musical skies while probing the emotional lows.”

  – Escafandrista

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• “Eat Your Friends” Compilation Reviewed at DOA

  “Over almost a decade, Hidden Shoal records developed a reputation as a consistently innovative and experimental music label, giving to us music of remarkable qualities whether it was the instrumental excursions of Gilded, the blissed-out indie of My Majestic Star, the electronica of Marcus Mehr, the alt.folk stylings of Kramies – the HSR list of significant talents was a lengthy one. I say was, as in 2014 or thereabouts, the Hidden Shoal label underwent a reorganisation of sorts, and it began to seem that one of the more influential Australian record labels of the recent past was itself going into hiding. Perhaps so, although only to return refreshed, renewed, invigorated and with its varying artistic visions intact – the Eat Your Friends compilation proves that the Hidden Shoal label is properly with us again.

  One thing I’ve found when reviewing compilations is that not infrequently, when I put them into my music players, the tracks separate instead of remaining in their album folder, and that has happened with my copy of Eat Your Friends, encouraging me to view each of the tracks as a single release rather than view the album itself as a cohesive whole. Then there’s the fact that only some of its contributors are already known to me and so, ditching some of my preconceptions about what it’s going to sound like, I began listening to the 11 tracks in a random sequence, and prepared for the unexpected.

  Firstly, there’s singer/songwriter Erik Nilsson’s “Moksha Can Wait”, a song which electronic composer Marcus Mehr has taken and adapted to his subtly developed production sound, a track that begins almost inaudibly and builds to a staggering crescendo of soaring, roaring electronic sound and with Nilsson’s guitar and piano providing a counterpoint to Mehr’s swirling atmospherics. The ambient chill of City Of Satellites is given an added gloss by Tim Manzano, although I’m not so sure what he’s actually done with the track – it does sound a lot like the City Of Satellites I know from their Machine Is My Animal album, although as the track progresses and the rhythm and bass begin to disintegrate into a dubby conclusion it seems more apparent where Manzano has left his mark. Arc Lab’s “Through The Burning Glass” is remixed by Glanko, beginning with a club-level bassline before levelling into a noir tinged synth epic. And just when you thought the tracks on Eat Your Friends were entirely instrumentals, Rew perform a cover version of Umpire’s “Green Light District” and they do it with a vocal, alongside the strings and crashing cymbals and haltingly uncertain rhythms, a highlight of an album each of whose tracks is in one or another way remarkable.”

  – DOA

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Press Releases

No press releases, sorry!

Artist Photos

Music Videos

Licensing

Willem Gator’s music is  available for licensing (master & sync cleared) through Hidden Shoal. Please contact us with some basic details about your project and the track(s) you wish to use and we’ll be sure to get back to you straight away.