Around these days ten years ago in 2014, we re-released Panorama with Boira Discos, but to me, it felt like the album’s true official release. The previous summer, I had quietly uploaded the songs to my Bandcamp and sent a few emails to friends—that was the extent of my promo efforts. So doing it within the Boira platform was more appropriate and felt more like an official release.
Recently, while organizing my hard drives, I came across some more tracks I had worked on around the same time. Almost all music from Panorama was made with samples found in my dad's band's unreleased recordings. They were very bootleg-y, but they had this nice feeling. The fact is, I was there (I was around 7 or 8) when most of the original songs were recorded with an Atari ST controlling via MIDI a Yamaha DX7 and a Roland D50, and everything went to a Fostex 8-track tape recorder, which was very impressive. Those sounds have stayed with me ever since.
I have also found the entirety of one of the only live sets I did of this album. You can watch it here— https://youtu.be/iyb79ngXqdk
I have also found some words written by Apartament18 at that time:
Shoeg, ethereal electronica from Barcelona. Or not. Because it could have been recorded amidst the mist and damp beach sand of Bristol. Or during the odd hours of the night, dazzled by the lights in the hallways of the London Underground. Or in a room overlooking the central station in Hong Kong. Or in a basement in Green Village, Brooklyn.
Shoeg releases Panorama to illustrate lost music that now sees the light of day. Fragments and reflections of other times, recordings that had been sleeping in a drawer and now, with velvet gloves, shine again in a new form, a new dimension. Rediscovered music that seems to condense into a new state through a hazy interface that tinges every note. An album made of pieces, loose fragments, long and short in duration, evoking landscapes never lived yet deeply familiar. Sketches and songs moving between cold atmospheres and disconcerting caresses, between the sweetness of past times and the hope of the future. Music that reminisces, reinterpreted from scratch with the scaffolding of nighttime and instrumental exploration as its foundation, giving the whole a very intriguing air of retrospective electronica.
Listening to Shoeg gives me the same feeling as when I listen to Leyland Kirby, Shigeto, or Balam Acab: it feels like I’m hearing life, the world, the real noise, the "surface noise," but from underwater, while looking at the sky. Perhaps you’ll tell me you’ve never tried it...? Well, you’re already late—just as you’re late to listen to this fabulous album by Shoeg. Tick-tock, tick-tock...
Music, mix & master by Carlos Martorell
Artwork by Ana Drucker
Originally released by Boira Discos
The release contains some extra artworks by Ana Drucker, and the video recording of Sun (Panorama) at Bar Lupita, Barcelona in a Formes Diverses de Vida event in December 2014.
