By Keith Walsh
Sean Shimmer is a man of surprising abilities. As vocalist and guitarist for his rock band Shimmer Bed, Shimmer aka Sean Paul carries a cosmopolitan swagger whether he’s rocking out at the Whiskey, at small clubs, or as he’s previously done, creating lo fi rock and roll recordings in hotel rooms around Hollywood.
I just discovered another facet of Shimmer’s creativity, when he released electronic music on Bandcamp.com. A far cry from his guitar music, and far superior to the many slick overproduced electronic efforts found on Bandcamp and major streamers, Sean Shimmer’s Now We Are Rich Like The Clouds is bursting with unique energy. The conceptual, constantly shifting soundscapes range from ethereal grooves to minimalist dirges and beats. Something about these – possibly the willingness to embrace the meaning of a single note or chord for minutes at a time — somehow reminds me of Peter Gabriel’s soundtrack Passion, for the 1988 Scorsese film, Last Temptation Of Christ.
“I don’t need anything to be fulfilled creatively. My imagination is there, that’s enough. A pencil and my mind. The electronic stuff is very immediate and sort of the sound of those thoughts.”
Sean Shimmer
Shimmer told me he makes all these pieces using a cheap Asian laptop, a Chuwi, and the stock plugins in Ableton. He inputs the notes on a laptop keyboard, often while laying around his home in Echo Park. “I’ve had synths and guitars, and what not. But less I have the bigger my mind goes. I don’t need anything to be fulfilled creatively. My imagination is there, that’s enough. A pencil and my mind. The electronic stuff is very immediate and sort of the sound of those thoughts.”
The opener, ‘fr33dvmb’ conjures a dark emotional, technical landscape and sorrow, while “re visionary’ is somewhat apocalyptic, making me think of Scorsese’s desert landscape, or maybe that of Herbert’s Dune. “wait for what” is a glitchy, intriguing little piece suggesting the politics of control and emotional growth, and then some digital drums come in and it suddenly gets bigger.
Shimmer’s avoidance of cliché is refreshing, apparently coming from a unique perspective rather than a calculated effort to do something differently. Even the title track, while seemingly playing with commercial melodies, is filled with glitch and distortion, reflecting Shimmer’s creative impulse and fascination with his tools, and it never sounds derivative.
The topic “pick me up before I melt away” suggests the fragility and impermanence of life in Los Angeles, in a quiet little piece with subdued drums and quirky synths. “say it like you mean it” is a quietly meditative plea for better communication that builds into something anthemic. “i’m in the valley of concrete” is dark piece reflecting a life among the towers, walls and streets of the city. “I will never forget” is haunting and ghostly. “love is for freaks” plays with resonance and static motion, then gets a bit circus-like with a bright, psychedelic melodic figure that repeats. “you are a painting” is glitchy, almost 8 bit like, with a single chord groove reflected in the static bassline.
Shimmer knows genres intuitively and follows the flow as he creates each song, guided by visual imagination. The dissonant brass sounds in “you are a painting” again remind me of Gabriel’s Passion. “mood is you” also reminds me of this, as the long droning note continues and sublime angelic chords come in, the meaning coming from the persistence and sameness rather than any change. Such is life in the barren desert, as it is in the density of urban Los Angeles.
Shimmer Bed On Bandcamp
Sean Shimmer On Instagram
Sean Shimmer On YouTube
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