Matt Shoemaker Tropical Amnesia One Ferns Available through the Helen Scarsdale Agency: $13.00 Ah! A selection of pure field recordings from Matt Shoemaker. Well, we should mention that these are not completely unadulterated documents from the field, or rather the jungle as it happens to be for this album. Shoemaker does use some a restrained use of EQ, subtle collage techniques, and a few crossfades, but Tropical Amnesia moves away from the lysergic oppressiveness of electronics and extreme filtering used in such masterpieces as Spots in the Sun or Erosion of the Analogous Eye. Murky slurps and muddy gloops from watery environs mark the first third of the album, transitiong into insectoid crackling that has more in common with VLF recordings of the earth's magnetosphere, and then onto a humid, ominous chorale of nocturnal insects. The jungle most certainly is alive! Here's what Mr. Shoemaker has to say for himself. "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 ho memade 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 the scope 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