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.
