Wollscheid, Achim - Shifts
SKU
RITORNELL14867
The post-industrial sound artist Achim Wollscheid presents this work on the Mille Plateaux sub-label Ritornell, home of the more abstract tangents of the label's roster, with less electronica and more pure experiments in sound. Shifts is a CD capturing one on-air happening that the Frankfurt noise artist made in the ether in the year 2000. With free rein of the airwaves of Radio X, the artist performed a simple process of remixing CDs by Olivia Block, Phill Niblock, Dean Roberts, John Hudak, and Gordon Monahan. The music here explores the transformative possibilities of using a CD player shuffle/scan function to make locked grooves, using as little as one second of audio at a time. The results bring to mind Oval, the group that used broken CDs as the source of its compositions, and also recalls ambient and systems music where the medium is often more important than the message. Hence, this recording has a sound in keeping with its label's aesthetic: minimal, austere, and free of imagery or information beyond the bare essentials. The recording comes with all the deconstructive rigor expected from '90s recordings by Merzbow, RLW, or Bernhard Gunter. An intriguing release that holds its own in the world of deconstructive sound art, and at the same time beholds a meditative quality that can be hypnotic while still challenging the perception of the listener.-Sylvie Harrison/All Music