New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Revisiting his Musical Persona,
Martin Walker (as Alter-Ego, Performer Art Schop,) is Inspired by the Lives and Works of Seminal Writers Including Emily Dickinson, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus and others -- Literate Rock Album 'Death Waits II: The Writers' is out March 12th
Album Package Features
Stunning Illustrations by Eric Collins
Performer Art Schop is the alter ego of singer, writer, philosopher and technologist
Martin Walker. On his esoteric new rock album 'Death Waits II: The Writers,' Schop pays homage to the lives and literary styles of an eclectic range of writers, including Sylvia Plath, Dante, Emily Dickinson, Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus and more. Walker describes these writers as "mortals creating immortality", and shares details in his liner notes, here: https://artschopmusic.com/death-waits-ii-the-writers/
As was the case with his acclaimed first album, 2015's 'Death Waits I:
Music and Fine Arts', Walker creates 'biography songs' as thoughtful vignettes - each track becomes a literate piece of art in which Schop may emulate the vocal mannerisms of the writer's style (as he describes below) or have the sound of the song evoke a mood consistent with the writer's works. This is a complex, multi-dimensional collection in which Walker performs as Schop who performs in the mindset of
Dante and so on.
Walker describes the concept as follows:
"Literature and music have always overlapped for me. Writers like Emily Dickinson, Samuel Beckett, and Albert Camus use rhythms and colors the way that Beethoven, Bowie, and Satie do. And songs inspired by books and writers have long been part of my musical output. The Death Waits project put songs about artists front and center, and proved so fertile that The Writers eventually took up an album for themselves! As with the song for Sappho on Death Waits I, Death Waits II weaves together the works, the lives and the literary styles of its subjects — Beckett inspires terse, elliptical lines, Camus demands philosophical beauty, Plath's father takes over as the deluded narcissistic narrator of her fate. Working on these songs over the years, I found that the preoccupations and motivations of these writers informed each other reinforcing the common theme, that of mortals creating immortality."
Each song on 'Death Waits II' is accompanied by a stunning illustration, courtesy of artist Eric Collins. This striking visual element, coupled with Walker's song notes (link above,) provides an additional glimpse into the project's intellectual and musical complexity. See a portfolio of Collins' new collection, here:
https://spark.adobe.com/page/rnpvyyZ9x9Y5r/
A series of stark, intimidating, intense videos have been shot, and a clip for the title track is viewable here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4YrzVH7eiI&feature=youtu.be
'Death Waits II' will be released March 12th, and it is available for pre-order now. An album release concert and tribute to Jimi Zhivago's work on the project will be March 15th at NuBlu Classic, 62 Avenue C in NYC, at 8:30pm. Zhivago (Walker's collaborator on the 'Death Waits' projects) sadly passed away after completion of the recordings.
An early review offered praise:
https://audiofuzz.com/hear/writers-to-indulge-in-art-schop-the-writers/
Art Schop has done it again. In his last album, he explored some of his favorite painters and sculptors; in this album, he explores his feelings and reactions to his favorite writers, many of which are mine also. These artists are Emily Dickinson, Haruki Murakami, Isaac Babel, Samuel Beckett, Sylvia Plath,
James Joyce, Dante, Paul Bowles, Seamus Heaney, and Albert Camus. And how you knew three of my favorite poets were Dickinson, Plath, and
Dante (you need to include Sexton and Rosetti the next time), and Murakami is my go-to author always. And of course, Schop's lyrics, music, and especially his keyboards always set the mood for his great introspective songs. No doubt, Art Schop is one of the most intellectual singer/songwriters out there without being so obtuse as to scare potential listeners away. This is magnificent music.
ABOUT ART SCHOP:
Martin G. Walker began writing, recording and performing as Art Schop upon feeling constrained by the limits of the singer-songwriter format. After writing a song about Arthur Schopenhauer's turgid inner life (or so imagined), Walker adopted and adapted his favorite philosopher's moniker and moved merrily forward into a productive period of songwriting that has yielded song cycles about the novels A Chronicle of A Death Foretold by Marquez and The Fall by Camus, income inequality and the subsequent collapse of the Greek empire (Wolfswork), and Composers, Musicians and Artists in Death Waits I, bringing us to his current outing Death Waits II: The Writers. Expanded Bio:
https://artschopmusic.com/about/
