Andrew Shapiro

Albums

The High Line and Other Places (2015)

Singles Ep (2013)

Intimate Casual (2012)

An album of hazy piano instrumentals that took two years to write. Eschewing fancy studios with fancy pianos, Shapiro opted to record at his Brooklyn home using his Suzuki upright piano. It incorporates a mute damping pedal that enhances the gossamer feel of its ten beautiful tracks. Possibly one of the finest Ambient piano albums ever recorded, the album also includes Shapiro’s cover of Energy Flow, the famous solo piano piece by fellow New York resident Ryuichi Sakamoto.
--Mark Prendergast

Produced by Michael Riesman

100 Houses: Gatsby Meets Caulfield (2012)

Possibly Shapiro's most idiosyncratic recording is 100 Houses: Gatsby Meets Caulfield, a full vocal album of songs based upon the literary masterpieces The Great Gatsby and The Catcher In The Rye. After leaving Conservatory, Shapiro reread both novels consecutively once a year for six straight years and, taking a leaf from both William Burroughs and David Bowie, he highlighted words and phrases in both books over time, put them in a word processor and jumbled them up to form lyrics. According to Shapiro, "The idea was to imagine if Jay Gatsby met Holden Caulfield and had a talk about how they’d do things differently if they had a chance to do things all over again.” --Mark Prendergast

1. Tomorrow We Will Run Faster
2. 100 Houses
3. Home at a Special Time
4. Double You
5. Mothers
6. If It Fades
7. Rejected Film Theme

SOUNDESIGN (EXPANDED EDITION) (2011)

A collection of early synthesizer pieces from Shapiro's San Francisco days coupled with four new pieces including vocal compositions. Inspired by playing the Exit Festival in Serbia, Shapiro stayed on for two weeks and immersed himself in the Balkan culture resulting in the album’s standout track Sarajevo, a new version of Mint Green put in a sequencer and re-imagined. --Mark Prendergast

Numbers, Colors and People (2009)

Recorded in one day at Philip Glass’s studio, the album is all instrumental piano with a soft pedal style that would become Shapiro's trademark. A truly Ambient work, it shows how far American Ambient has come since the days of La Monte Young or Windham Hill's George Winston. While neither avant- garde or completely soporific, the music has all the richness of Debussy and Satie coupled with the crystal clear production of Michael Riesman and mastering of Michel Geiss. Not only is it the place to start with Shapiro's oeuvre, it also contains the classic tracks Quiet Kissing and Mint Green. The latter’s astonishing success on the Internet and as theme music belies its origins. In fact, Mint Green was directly inspired by the Cocteau Twins's track My Truth from their 1993 album Four-Calendar Café. --Mark Prendergast

Produced by Michael Riesman

Quiet Kissing EP (2006)

Recorded in Los Angeles and Brooklyn, Quiet Kissing is divided equally between instrumental and vocal tracks. The EP begins where Invisible Days left off with a gently percussive song which then moves into Ambient territory with two instrumentals, the shimmering Quick and the real meat of the project Quiet Kissing, a solo piano piece which seems to hang in space, its beautiful logic unflolding like a water lily gliding on water. --Mark Prendergast

1. Detectors in the Eyes
2. Quiet Kissing
3. Quick
4. Quiet Kissing (Solo Piano)

Invisible Days EP (2003)

While living in a San Francisco art gallery in 2000, Shapiro began working on his first album, Invisible Days on a Yamaha EX5 Synthesizer. Invisible Days introduced Shapiro to the world as a very cool sound designer of vocal music. Aided by the airy vocals of Keisha Hutchins and Peter Hess's flute, the results are four pieces of sonic precision effortlessly marrying American Minimalism with a New Wave sensibility. Even Richard Serra gets a tribute in song and sound. --Mark Prendergast

1. Airbox
2. Blueblack
3. Richard Serra
4. Moon's Reflection