matt shoemaker
erosion of the analogous eye
(hms015) CD

The studio of Matt Shoemaker is alive with electricity. Impossibly complex wirings channel signal in and out of analog synth modules, an array of curious aluminums boxes with unmarked knobs, slinkies strung from ceiling to floor creating a set of giant spring reverb units, accelerometers attached to consumer electronic errata, and even a few conventional tools like guitar stomp boxes and a bruised computer. For all of the convoluted engineering that goes into Shoemaker's equipment, the resulting mesmerism in sound appears effortless and strangely organic.
Shoemaker has enjoyed a semi-obscure career through his polymath activities that bridge such electronic experiments with a choice library of globe-trotted field recordings and a broad knowledge of avant-garde cinema. For Erosion of the Analogous Eye, Shoemaker waves his hands about his laboratory to construct an ever-evolving album for mutant dronemuzik. His electrical seas of synthetic bristling undulate with placid regularity, only to find Shoemaker contorting these brain-melting psychedelics into cancerous, atonal bellows. Out of his allotropic shifts, one can find swells of irradiated static transform into the graceful chime of temple bells; and electrical phase patterns slip into deep forest murmurings dotted with narcoleptic birds calls. On one hand, this album is prescient of the revival for progressive electronics currently underway in the flood of US post-noise projects; it's easy to triangulate this between Emeralds and Heldon. But on the other hand, Erosion of the Analogous Eye is the continuation of where Shoemaker had begun with his early work on Trente Oiseaux with its grotesques exaggerations of field recording into this beguiling piece of art.
The artwork on Erosion of the Analogous Eye features unique hand-dyed abstractions mounted onto letterpressed paper. This has warranted a very small pressing of 300 copies.