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SHOEMAKER, MATT - Tropical Amnesia Two & Three

Format: do-CD Label & Cat.Number: Ferns Recordings stem_06 Release Year: 2019 Note: two unreleased sound art pieces from the Amazonian rainforest (at / around Mamori Lake), recorded during a residency organized by FRANCISCO LOPEZ in 2007/2008, condensed in the typical immersive SHOEMAKER style... - "a very delicate work, even in all it's considerable presence, volume-wise that is.." [FdW/Vital Weekly] - ed. of 300 copies Price (incl. 19% VAT): €15.00 More Info "In November of 2007 I was part of a group of eleven sound artists who journeyed to Brazil to participate in the Mamori Sound Project, an annual residency/workshop under the direction of Francisco López that convenes in an isolated area of lowland lakes and rainforest, perhaps around 4 hours' journey outside of Manaus, right in the heart of Amazonia. I had some very limited experience with tropical rainforests from travels in South East Asia, but nothing like the immersion that was central to what Francisco had organized: direct access to a staggeringly diverse bioacoustic environment unmatched anywhere else on Earth. Over the course of the two weeks we spent at Mamori lake exploring and recording, there was never a pause in the stream of curious animal sounds. Not even during sleep, as the nighttime would roar to life and pass into dreams. I had come prepared with the equipment that I could afford to bring: a pair of condenser microphones, several homemade contact microphones, and a single hydrophone. With these I was able to capture all of the sounds used to make the three Tropical Amnesia parts. While assembling the field recordings, I was immediately drawn toward the idea of imagining the rainforest, and the bodies of water contained within, as an unfathomable void of sorts, and something beyond thescope of enduring memory. Reflecting on my own memories from Mamori Lake and the surrounding area, I can of course picture the individual ant or frog, but it is the sheer multitudes and abundance of life that persists in my mind as a consuming, evolving abstract." - Matt Shoemaker - March, 2010 Nine years later after the release of Tropical Amnesia one, Ferns Recordings is proud to be able to discover the rest of this trip with a certain sadness. Ferns Recordings wanted to pay a tribute to Matt Shoemaker by not letting these magnificent recordings remain in oblivion. All sound recorded November 2007 in/at/around Mamori Lake, Amazonas, Brazil. Material culled and assembled December 2007/January 2008 in Seattle. https://mattshoemaker.bandcamp.com/album/tropical-amnesia-two-three "In 2017, Matt Shoemaker passed away and yet somehow there is still new music from him to be released, which is a good thing. Ferns already released the first instalment of Tropical Amnesia (not reviewed in these pages), and maybe they had the second and third part from Shoemaker, but not yet the resources to release it earlier. These two discs contain sounds recorded in the Amazon area in Brazil in November 2007 and in December of that year and January 2008 this has been used to create the two-hour works that span these discs. I couldn't tell if these works were made out of single events, or perhaps also with the help of loops; I assume there has been sort of layering of sound events in both these pieces. It works in two different ways here. 'Tropical Amnesia Two' is a rather straight forward work, once the ball gets rolling; from there on it stays in a fairly loud and oppressing volume but throughout it changes and moves through what I think is probably the whole range of animal life; insects, frogs, birds. In 'Tropical Amnesia Three' there is a less straight forward approach and while the piece moves through the same animal sounds, there is a different build-up, within one point birds leaping out of the choir of cicadas and ending with something that is close by the microphone making a popping sound, as if Shoemaker was close to the pond in a rowing boat. Towards the end of it all, there is a sign of human life and perhaps also the best example of this being construction of organized sound, rather than straightforward documentation of an event. This, I thought, was very delicate work, even in all it's considerable presence, volume-wise that is. It reminded me of the movie 'Monos' about the life of guerrilla’s in the Colombian rain forest and which I thought was one of the best movies I saw this year." [FdW/Vital Weekly]