Matt Shoemaker Spots in the Sun CD HMS 008 Vital Weekly by Jos Smolders April 5, 2007 Trente Oiseaux releases never make it into these pages, so the two CDs they released by Matt Shoemaker went by unnoticed. Both cover and information don't give any information as to how, what and where. Let's assume Shoemaker is a guy with a microphone, a recording device and a computer. Taken the outside to the inside, the field recordings to the computer and processing them, so far that we no longer recognize any of the original sound. That sounds like Bernard Günter, Roel Meelkop, Richard Chartier or Marc Behrens? Just a little bit, as there is an important difference. Music by Shoemaker is always audible and it seems to more than the others to work with drones. Stretched out fields of sound with minor developments is what the bigger part of this CD is about. Then, like the air escaping of a balloon, a piece ends abruptly, with much activity. These differences may seem small but in the world of microsound they surely make a difference. Shoemaker's music is always present, and perhaps a little more raw than mentioned counterparts, but that's what I like this release. It moves more wildly through various textures from semi-soft to semi-loud in a more continuos manner and thus Shoemaker can be lumped in with some of the drone crowd than say with his microsound counterparts. In the field of drone music his collage techniques may seem odd, but it's surely an original voice. A high quality work, with minor and vital differences.