Art Schop - Wed
Wed, Martin Walker’s eighth studio release as Art Schop, takes a sharp turn, or perhaps a giant leap, away from the territory of philosophical world-building into the realm of the intimate long-term relationship. With tender, candid and wryly self-aware sketches of married life in all of its gentle and wrenching significance, Walker reveals what is felt and unsaid between two people who share a life together.
Walker has written and published fiction, as well as a book of original philosophy that connects the nature of material existence to the meaning of life. His discography reflects this urge to tackle ambitious, wide-ranging themes. The destabilizing financial crisis and its eerie echoes of the rise and fall of the Greek Empire inspired his 2012 album Wolfswork, wrapping in current events the tale of Lycurgus, the apocryphal founder of the Stoics. The Death Waits series (I and II) delves into the lives and works of artists from Michelangelo to Lou Reed, imagining the moments that shaped their creative paths. Starguide (2021) explores humanity’s place in the universe as we grapple with the tension between individual and collective survival. The Fifth Hammer (2025), riffing on Daniel Heller-Roazen’s book The Fifth Hammer: Pythagoras and the Disharmony of the World, transforms the philosophical missteps of thinkers like Pythagoras and Kepler into a set of down-to-earth and often surprisingly funny songs. Inspired by an ambiguously provocative quote from Aristotle, o friends (2025) traces the impact on his life of five of Walker’s closest friends in an evocative, soaring experimental symphony. And on Wittgenstein & the Transcendental (2026) he transforms the life and work of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein into something “oddly intimate, darkly funny, and emotionally absorbing all at once” (Illustrate Magazine).
With a degree in Physics from Oxford University and having served as the Information Services Director for the global law firm Debevoise & Plimpton, Walker takes a hands-on approach in the studio, and while his analytical side leads him to create music in which everything is essential, he values the contributions of ‘mistakes’ and spontaneity. (On Wed without drums for the song Eno Walker pulled out his deck of Eno’s Oblique Strategies and drew a card urging him to ‘use the body.’ The result? A surprisingly effective bass drum sound created by beating his fist on his chest.)
Wed began in a spasm of unfiltered creativity on the evening of a therapeutic mushroom trip. We Ate Alone was so surprising and so raw that Walker wasn’t sure it could be released at all. After arranging and recording the track, he sent it to Mark Nevers to mix. Nevers responded that it was his favorite song he’d worked on all year and urged Walker to write more like it. The songs came in a flood.
Each song on Wed engages the reader in a narrative time-capsule, from the hyper-nuanced details of a celebratory dinner where nothing actually happens but everything changes (‘she steered you right on the mushroom dish, we liked that she spoke her mind, unlike me who didn’t want to jeopardize, what I knew wasn’t mine’), to the belated recitation of all the things that are appreciated and unspoken about a partner (‘Your sailor’s mouth and your indifference to boats; your intervention when the kids are at each other’s throats; your sense of style and your ability to wear it; that though you can’t find life’s meaning, you continue to bear it’). But drawing the threads of these vignettes together is the arc and evolution of a marriage held up for examination across twenty-five years. This is the realm of a seasoned, time-worn artist, like Siddhartha at the river after years of wandering, discovering enlightenment in the unassuming task of transporting travelers from one bank to the other.
The inevitable Chris Heinz returns to the drum kit. And, again at Nevers urging, Walker wrote string arrangements to be recorded by Peter Stopschinski. (Stopschinski added his own string arrangement for Eno.) Mark Nevers mixed the album.
After a career in technology and a spell as founder and operator of an online brain training company MindSparke, Walker now works on his music full time in Brooklyn, NY. He strives to create musical worlds that not only move the listener but also invite them to throw out their preconceptions and reflect on what is or what might be. His work embraces the power of song to provoke unguarded thoughts and feelings. For Walker, music transcends expression and becomes a way to communicate a vision of the world and our place in it.