The Sunken Plethora Consumes All
Label: Mystery Sea
Catalog#: MS53
Format: CDR
Country: Belgium
Limited edition of 120 copies.
Tracklisting:
1. Hovering (11:21)
2. The Apneist (15:27)
3. Hallucination Pool (10:09)
4. The Sunken Plethora Consumes All (13:34)
Press:
Vital Weekly
Review
by Frans de Waaard
June 2009
Wonderful Wooden Reason
Review by Ian Holloway
June 2009
June 2009
Following
last week's release on The Helen Scarsdale Agency, here
is another release by Matt Shoemaker. Again its a work of analogue
electronics and field recordings. And also again like last week,
there is one piece which seems to be dealing with 'just' environmental
sounds, water of course (this is Mystery Sea after all), in 'Hovering'.
The other three pieces might rely on field recordings but they
are well hidden in the electronic treatments given to the material
by Shoemaker. Highly organic once again, highly atmospheric,
once again. Perhaps it costs me more trouble to enjoy this following
the 'Erosion Of The Analogous Eye' from last week. Maybe its the
similarity in approach that makes two of these discs in one week
from the same person a bit much. I do think that 'The Sunken Plethora
Consumes All' is a great work. There is no doubt there, or perhaps
even better (the somewhat shorter pieces make a bit more coherent
compositions), but in this vast crowded field this is maybe a
bit much. One to put aside for a while, and then return to it.
The work is worth it.
Wonderful Wooden Reason
Review by Ian Holloway
June 2009
The
gentle nature sound opening to this release from American composer
Shoemaker belies the turmoil of sound that soon unfolds from the
speakers. A brutal watery cascade that eventually settles
into the
hesitant clank and drone of the second track, The Apneist.
Here his
field recordings have taken on a very different feel to those of the
opener as they clatter, hiss and drone away below sheets of metallic
sound. The purring trepidation that opens track 3,
Hallucination
Pool, soon evolves with a slow fanfare of vivid and
cinematic tones
before receding so as to allow the slow build gong and drone of the
albums closing title track.
Shoemaker
is a name I've been aware of for a little while now but this is my
first opportunity to hear his music and it doesn't
disappoint. He
makes music that is both introspective and demonstrative in equal
measures which I foresee could become quite an addictive prospect.
I
smiled when reading these words describing Shoemaker’s sound art within
the promo’s sleeve: “barely relying on models generated by his
predecessors or current peers”. That’s absolutely fallacious: there’s a
lot of things here that one could associate to other people and records
of this area. Organum, Irr. App. (Ext.), Jim Haynes to name just three,
and – get this – even Popol Vuh-like phantoms somewhere. What’s true
instead is that this man reveals himself to be an artist who can
organize sonic sources quite smartly, the result being a record that
offers enigmas and symphonious concreteness in equal doses. Starting
from the natural field recordings – very beautiful ones, admittedly –
of the initial “Hovering” the composer leads us through a thick
undergrowth of drone and resonant clangor without falling in the canons
of shameful imitation, always setting the listener in a frame of mind
between perplexed and spellbound (this reviewer fell asleep during the
first headphone try). The development of “The Apneist” transits across
stunning static mirages blemished by metropolitan traces (and perhaps
the moans of a didgeridoo, but – again – it’s all very well done). By
the time we have arrived at the final stages with “Hallucination Pool”
– possibly the most dramatic piece - and the title track (the
sinisterly moribund tolling at the beginning of the latter is exactly
the thing that was needed) the music has gradually become an
established component in the neighboring environment while managing to
nourish an invisible inside quaking in a much more effectual way than
what was imagined at the outset.