Tropical Amnesia One
Label: Ferns Recordings
Catalog#: stem_01
Format: CD
Country: France
Released: April, 2010
Limited Edition 300 Copies
Tracklisting:
1. Tropical Amnesia One (64:35)
Press:
In the handful of exceptional
records from concrete/drone composer Matt Shoemaker, the field
recording has been central to his work. Take the aggregate tumblings of
minerals from Groundless or the woozy humidity from Spots In The Sun,
Shoemaker's use of the field recording in his pieces is miles apart
from the pastoral use of bird songs or a gentle rainstorm to offer
something 'natural' for an electronic ambient record. No, Shoemaker
amplifies the more threatening aspects of nature with insects emitting
nightmarish chorales, beetles aggressively scurrying towards hapless
prey, and the air of a landscape so heavy and pungent with decay as to
be impossible to breathe. For Shoemaker, the world may be nasty,
brutish, and short; but he's discovering a weird beauty way out there
amidst the grotesqueries of the world.
On the last two records from Shoemaker, a greater emphasis on synthesized psychedelia shot through his tense drone constructs; so with Tropical Amnesia One, Shoemaker has built an album that's just field recordings, without much of the atypical filtering, gizmos, and effects that turn Shoemaker's studio into a scientific laboratory. All of these recordings came from a two week residency Shoemaker spent deep in the Amazon forest, where silence was never afforded amidst the constant buzz of insects, torrential cloudbursts, and burbling streams all teaming with life. Watery sounds introduce the first 20 minutes to this album with all sorts of sodden creaks, slurping movements, and mud-sucking events amassed together. It's as if the vantage point to Shoemaker's sounds were just below the surface of a stagnant body of water next to a muddy embankment, crawling with leeches, skin-breaching worms, and any other parasitic creature that could come to mind. Shoemaker then shifts his attention for the remaining 44 minutes upward to the tops of the trees, where the insects have conspired to broadcast an ominous nocturnal hiss worthy of horror film sound design. A few insects and birds puncture the swarming noise, making the environment seem a lot less threatening that Shoemaker has contextualized it to be. A powerful, sublime recording, and what looks like to the be first in a series of recordings from the Amazon.
On the last two records from Shoemaker, a greater emphasis on synthesized psychedelia shot through his tense drone constructs; so with Tropical Amnesia One, Shoemaker has built an album that's just field recordings, without much of the atypical filtering, gizmos, and effects that turn Shoemaker's studio into a scientific laboratory. All of these recordings came from a two week residency Shoemaker spent deep in the Amazon forest, where silence was never afforded amidst the constant buzz of insects, torrential cloudbursts, and burbling streams all teaming with life. Watery sounds introduce the first 20 minutes to this album with all sorts of sodden creaks, slurping movements, and mud-sucking events amassed together. It's as if the vantage point to Shoemaker's sounds were just below the surface of a stagnant body of water next to a muddy embankment, crawling with leeches, skin-breaching worms, and any other parasitic creature that could come to mind. Shoemaker then shifts his attention for the remaining 44 minutes upward to the tops of the trees, where the insects have conspired to broadcast an ominous nocturnal hiss worthy of horror film sound design. A few insects and birds puncture the swarming noise, making the environment seem a lot less threatening that Shoemaker has contextualized it to be. A powerful, sublime recording, and what looks like to the be first in a series of recordings from the Amazon.
Whereas a Graffiti artist’s primary messages are “I Was Here” and “Here I Am,” a field recording/electrocaoustic artist’s might be “I was There” and “This is what I heard.” In the slow progression of “tropical amnesia one,” Matt Shoemaker takes us from primordial gurgles present in pond life, somewhat higher perspective of birdsong, to a suggestion of the infinite by the addition of a constant stream of noise. As the piece advances, there is a sense that even in the mundane, repetitive sounds of life, even in places where no one is there ordinarily to observe, some process takes place, at once common and majestic, maybe even holy, but certainly beyond words.
Shoemaker has said that the focus for this project was inspired by his participation in sound artist Francisco Lopez’s Mamori Sound Project, an annual workshop that gathers a small group of artists and exposes them directly to the teeming life and environment of the Amazon.
As a single track and as a project, “tropical amnesia one” seems unfinished only in the sense that all organic life moves at its own pace. Matt Shoemaker’s piece could literally extend forever; his reminder that the routine and repetitive pace of most life is evidence of action, not stasis. His later electronic manipulations at the end of the piece is more a nod to the awe of that realization than an attempt to make it more dramatic.
-- Mike Wood (June 30, 2010)
More field recordings here, this time around taken from the Amazonas, Brazil, to be precise the Mamori Lake. Shoemaker went around and inside the lake. He tapes the sounds there and treats the whole thing into one piece of music that lasts forty-six minutes. I have never been to the Amazonian rainforest, nor it is perfectly clear what Shoemaker did to the recordings. That aside, this is a great work. If I was to imagine how the Amazonian rainforest would sound like, I think it would sound like this. A fairly thick mass of sound of busy buzzing insect sounds, birds and wind like sounds. Shoemaker opts for a dramatic approach in this work: things start out relatively quiet and moody, but over the course of those sixty some minutes grows with some violent intention. Shoemaker uses strong equalization, adding low end sounds to the piece, that makes the earth tremble among the heavy weight of this piece. Yet he never looses the clarity of the sounds, birds and insects are always to be recognized here. An excellent piece along the lines of the best of Francisco Lopez in this field, especially 'La Selva' (which I think deserves a re-issue). Shoemaker delivers here a great work, perhaps his best so far.