matt shoemaker
No stranger to Vital Weekly with his various releases for labels such as Mystery Sea, Ferns and The Helen Scarsdale Agency. Maybe its just too easy to say, but Shoemaker is one of the drone boys. The press text says that the 'use of field recordings is very minimal here', so we have to guess what it is that Shoemaker does. His website reveals a bit: "Devices employed: microphones and assorted transducers, digital and analogue recorders, signal processors, computer, various electronic and acoustic instruments." That says some, but not all. Electronic instruments, acoustic instruments: that could be anything. Now I could do some guessing, and I'd say cello, guitar, sound effects, such as reverb and such alike, but maybe I am barking up the wrong tree. Three lengthy pieces are on this release which displays Shoemaker's skill quite well. No man for just some silent playing, or 'just' a bunch of drone loops circling about, as he keeps his music very lively. It bounces from these mellow looped drone sounds into a more harsher sound world, and these worlds grow easy together inside the length of a piece. Sometimes these build in a natural way and sometimes in a more gently disturbing manner. Three long pieces of an excellent beauty.
Subdued process-digital work from Matt Shoemaker on Soundtrack for Dislocation (ELEVATOR BATH eeaoa034), recorded in Seattle in 2008 and packaged by the label with some attractive full-colour photographs. In his images Shoemaker makes nature look ever so slightly alien, as though an innocent forest were the set for a science-fiction movie involving the invasion of a pulsating glob of pink jelly. Some of his music here generates the same sensations of anticipation, with their ultra-long sustained and extended abstract tones resembling long camera takes. The album includes one long track, ‘Circulation within the elemental drift’, which explores many of Shoemaker’s concerns with slow, patient dynamics and gradual shifts.
soundtrack for dislocation
(eeaoa034) CD
Matt Shoemaker's first full-length album for Elevator Bath is Soundtrack for Dislocation, an entirely self-contained account of a fantastically abstract and intensely personal vision.
As with much of Shoemaker's work, this is an album permeated with a very potent sense of unease. And despite the fact that the use of field recordings is very minimal here, there is a no less organically tangible quality which only contributes to the feeling of disquietude.
For those unfamiliar with Matt Shoemaker's work, Soundtrack for Dislocation is absolutely the ideal place to start as it is arguably the most fully-realized project in his catalog. All the necessary elements are present: The enigmatic cover and interior images, the cryptic track titles, and of course the recordings themselves - densely packed and elaborately evolved aberrancies. Shoemaker seems to have provided more than enough clues to the puzzles he offers in his works but, like the most effective tales, these subtle indications cannot quite account for all that happens. The rest is up to the astute listener who accepts this very inscrutability as the reward.
Matt Shoemaker's music has been released by such labels as Trente Oiseaux, The Helen Scarsdale Agency, Mystery Sea, and Ferns Recordings. He resides in the northwest of the United States.
Packaged inside an extra thick, full-color, matte finish, 6-panel digipak featuring Shoemaker's beautiful photography, this compact disc has been issued in an edition of 509 copies.
Total running time: 57 minutes
Track list:
- Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly
- Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector