Walt Shaw

Walt Shaw began his musical life back in the 1960s as a drummer playing rock and jazz. As time went on, his musical horizons broadened and he began to incorporate home-made instruments, found objects and electronics into his music-making. He has performed widely with other improvising musicians, in both the UK and Europe. He is also a visual artist. I say ‘also’, but these two sides to his creativity very much blur together: his visual art tends to look like his music and his music, to sound like his art. I know this is a subjective assessment on my part, but I think if you check out his artwork as well as listen to the album, you’ll probably get what I mean. It’s a connection Shaw acknowledges: as he puts it in the album notes, ‘I view my visual and sound creativity as very similar, originating from the same element of consciousness.’ Cave Printmaker is a conscious development of this connection. There are fifteen tracks in all and Shaw conceived them as ‘soundscapes … as if some of my paintings were converted to sound, rather like synaesthesia.’ The results are fluid and lyrical – not adjectives you often use in relation to artists whose work centres around percussion. Of course it’s subjective, but listening, I constantly found myself wanting to see what I was listening to, as the music is indeed ‘visual’ in a way that is hard to describe. The fact that Shaw comes at the music from two less-than-conventional directions – a visual artist’s sense of form and an expanded sound palette – makes for music that’s uncannily original and which could find an audience well beyond the confines of genre. It’s a very special album. – Dominic Rivron, INTERNATIONAL TIMES https://internationaltimes.it/of-synesthesia-and-soundscapes/ 

We last covered percussionist Walt Shaw on his 2025 collaboration Towards Momentum with Jim Tetlow, itself a follow-up to 2023’s Inner Skull Trail, and his 2024 collaboration with Martin Archer Biyartabiyu, and though it may seem like Shaw works mostly in collaborative settings and as a member of groups (Orchestra of the Upper Atmosphere, for example), he occasionally releases solo material — Burnt with a Brilliant Light came out in 2020, and his latest Cave Printmaker is the subject of this review. While one might usually expect solo albums by a drummer to feature more aggressive use of the drum kit, at least in a rock or jazz setting, Shaw uses his array of percussives and electronics in a far more explorative way, one that is both gentle and surprising, utilizing a wide array of sound sources, including electronics, to achieve his ends. Some of the pieces may be sparse and on the quiet side, but others make a bolder statement, sometimes overdubbed. We are often treated to a merging of field recordings, percussion, electronics, gongs and bells, even ceramic bowls, plastic pipes, wood blocks, bowed cymbals, and even occasional voices. Many of these pieces tie in with Shaw’s artistic endeavors, for exaple “Cavetrace” which was recorded in real time from a gallery installation which involved a large block of ice with various sized pebbles embedded — as the ice melts the pebbles fall onto amplified strings, thr result being at once surreal and otherworldly. For each of the fifteen tracks, Shaw documents all of the “instruments” that were used to create it; initially it doesn’t matter — one should just get to know the contour of the sounds and appreciate what’s there at face value, but eventually one will probably get curious (like myself) and want to take a look at the documentation in the booklet as to how this or some other sound was created, and there the clues can be assembled. If you’re looking for jazz or rock anything with a steady cadence, Cave Printmaker is not the place. This is more the essence of pure sonic exploration, not abrasive, not disturbing, but definitely a collection for the fearless sonic explorer. – Peter Thelen, EXPOSÉ http://expose.org/index.php/articles/display/walt-shaw-cave-printmaker-3.html

This new, second Discus Music solo, from percussionist and multi-media artist Walt Shaw gives listeners the chance to experience Walt’s many talents via fifteen short pieces in just over an hour. Walt is quite a talent. Having worked along with him at a number of Quadelectronic events, the way he can build complex pieces live is quite extraordinary, and was always a great foil for me to add other sounds to. Here, alone, Walt adopts all sorts of sonic guises, using a wide battery of percussion instruments and assorted other objects, along with all sorts of things to bow, manipulate, and/or treat with electronics, and occasionally the use of his own voice. The vast array of styles heard here can range from the stark and avant-classical to stylish drone and vastly reprocessed music that almost borders on the ambient shoegaze/post-rock field. So, you may find complex drums and percussion pieces here sounding like an early Stomu Yamash’ta or Tony Oxley performance, or really weirdly constructed musique concrete, or Karlheinz Stockhausen type intuitive performance, to AMM Music or Nuova Consonanza like improv, yet you’ll also hear many highly original mixtures that are just totally Walt Shaw. In all CAVE PRINTMAKER acts as a great showcase for Walt’s talents. A shame it’s only a download though. – AUDION