Murmer We Share A Shadow CD HMS 011 Vital Weekly December 2007 Releases on the Helen Scarsdale label are usually nicely packed and this new one is not different. As far as I recall this is the second CD for Murmer, also known as Patrick McGinley from America. However, he's a traveller, living in various parts of this world for some time, and then moves. In each of these locations he is present with his recorder and tapes the environment. This has brought him to England, Portugal, France, Estonia and Germany. In the development of his work he has moved from using a simple four track machine and external sound effects to the computer. McGinley is however not 'just' a field recordist. It's part of what he does. He also uses environments to play sounds using objects, like metal rods and balls. This variety of recordings is the foundation of his work: recordings of the environment and sounds played in it. In the third stage he treats his work on the computer and creates stylish pieces of drone music. This is what ties him to the Helen Scarsdale family, the dark drone relatives. Two long tracks of heavy rain fall that grow over the course of time into heavily computerized pieces of music, which work well on the atmospheric level. Perhaps as such he is not the one of the original players on the crowded scene, but his work can meet the best of his English counterparts, in particular Jonathan Coleclough and Colin Potter.-- Frans de Waard.