Matt Shoemaker

Matt Shoemaker's first full-length album for Elevator Bath is Soundtrack for Dislocation, an entirely self-contained account of a fantastically abstract and intensely personal vision. As with much of Shoemaker's work, this is an album permeated with a very potent sense of unease. And despite the fact that the use of field recordings is very minimal here, there is a no less organically tangible quality which only contributes to the feeling of disquietude. For those unfamiliar with Matt Shoemaker's work, Soundtrack for Dislocation is absolutely the ideal place to start as it is arguably the most fully-realized project in his catalog.

All the necessary elements are present: The enigmatic cover and interior images, the cryptic track titles, and of course the recordings themselves - densely packed and elaborately evolved aberrancies. Shoemaker seems to have provided more than enough clues to the puzzles he offers in his works but, like the most effective tales, these subtle indications cannot quite account for all that happens. The rest is up to the astute listener who accepts this very inscrutability as the reward. Matt Shoemaker's music has been released by such labels as Trente Oiseaux, The Helen Scarsdale Agency, Mystery Sea, and Ferns Recordings.