my name is shoe.

coloringforgrownups:

Happy Friday!


Download this page

Print it! Color it! Mail it back!

Wall-E: hood cat.

Caught this brief video the other night of the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, a wonderful city park that offers arguably the most breathtaking view in the five boroughs. 

I haven’t been updating this blog much for a while now, and there are a couple pretty big reasons why. For one, I got a new job which I love, and I’ve been keeping very busy with it. But more importantly, I got engaged at the end of the summer, and wedding planning is a full-time job in itself. I’m very happy. And this video is actually taken from the exact spot where I proposed, replete with iPad 2 billboard. Enjoy!

ANDREW SHOEMAKER - “SUMMER STORM”

Hello. I’ve been awfully busy lately, and it’s been too hot. But here’s a little sketch I’ve been working on. Hope you enjoy it.

We adopted a new kitten today! When we adopted Wall-E three years ago, Heather decided on the name weeks before even meeting the kitten. This time I was given naming rights, and I decided to name him Arnold, for the poet Matthew Arnold (not the Schwarzenegger). This little guy doesn’t know how lucky he is. We met him last weekend at a local adoption event on Pineapple Walk, and they told us that Arnold was picked up just the day before. He was still filthy and malnourished. Within seven days, he had a home. 

ANDREW SHOEMAKER - OCEAN OF NOISE (KRAUTROCK EDITION)

One afternoon some time ago, I sat in my living room and strummed along to one of my favorite songs, Arcade Fire’s ‘Ocean of Noise.’ I found myself getting lost in the bass line, a bouncy, classic soul cadence that really drives the whole song and keeps it centered. I started to play along with it, and subtly altered it into a pulsing krautrock beat. Immediately, I became obsessed with wanting to hear the whole song in that style, and so a new project was born.

I’ve been working for several weeks now, and after about a dozen iterations I finally completed the cover today. This was my first attempt at a lot of different things with my Pro Tools studio, most obviously vocals. I also built the beat using a drum computer instead of sequencing it. As a result of that, I had to learn to record my MIDI tracks onto audio files, and that has opened a lot of new possibilities for me. Strangely a project that felt like a lark at its inception has grown into the most ambitious thing I’ve done thus far. I’m very proud of this song, and my hope is that it does the source material justice.

ANDREW SHOEMAKER - “IN YOUR DAYDREAMS (NITE MUSIC)”

I spent the weekend putting together some music for http://inyourdaydreams.com by night. I encourage you guys to check out the site after 6:00 PM, or, if you want to do it now, just change your computer’s clock from AM to PM, or vice versa. The site encourages you to go do something else instead of daydream, like get your groove on to this danceable track. Galen said from Ann Arbor yesterday: “I’m dancing like it’s a John Hughes movie up in this here hotel room.” Quite. 

An old friend of mine from Chapel Hill put together a video accompaniment to his song “Dogon Cosmogony.” The track is emblematic of his style, a unique freeform rhythmic collage of often tribal beats and avant garde sounds. His sound is singular and difficult to categorize, and it gets better everyday. Check it out.

triplefacevortex:

Dogon Cosmogony—WO8(Other)

in your daydreams

The site I composed music for has gone live at last. Head over to http://inyourdaydreams.com and bring some much needed time-wastage to your otherwise productive workday. The site was written by Heather Apple, designed and built by Tofer Moran and Callie Peck, and creepy-whispered over by this moi. It’s tough to really describe this site. You just need to experience it for yourself. 

ANDREW SHOEMAKER - “DAYDREAMS SITE MUSIC (song version)”

As I mentioned last week, I have been commissioned to produce some music for a website that my girlfriend Heather Apple and Tofer Moran (of In the Circuit of the Sun) are building. The site isn’t live yet, so I can’t really go into detail on what it is or why the music was designed this way. As soon as the site is up, I will be sure to link to it and discuss it in more detail.

This version is not the one that you will hear on the site, at least, not quite. It is an earlier version that I was very happy with but which Heather and Tofer had some minor problems with. I made the changes they requested, but I want to go ahead and share this version as it is.