BLUE SHIFT (Puik)

Another mysterious Belgian release from the vaults of jelle crama, presumably on his prolific but secret, often unlabeled, multilingual, impossible to decipher lettering label Puik. Jelle has made a name for himself in a million ways and one of them is by putting out mysterious tapes of people from all over, making you question if the artists are real and if the tapes are even legit. The one i hold is totally unmarked on the J-Card, just his trademark gloops of globs for artwork, and scrawled on the cassette "Blueshift." For those unacquainted, Blueshift is the solo work of Providence's Cybele Collins primarily channeled through a solo violin. This tape is one sided and travels nicely; it's one of the many graces of the cassette format that it undermines the concept of 'tracks' and allows the whole side to flow together with each track working off each other, departing or complimenting and this release takes advantage of that property.
Harsh staccato stabs that sound as if a drum solo and a guitar solo somehow shared a windpipe, breathing the same ferocity. This almost sped up sounding warp mutates into what feels like a final stand, the last round of the battle, all the teeth have fallen out and it's an impact match. A drummer is added to the mix making the music more physical and accenting the already percussive nature of the playing. Moving from the harsh, though clean moments the atmosphere becomes more open, obscured by space, with slight plucks and clucks of strings and an exhausted breathing, almost animal sounding, taking over the horizon. Though not suggestive of resolution there is a quiet, meditative quality to the remainder of the tape with a real focus on detail though tripping and stuttering as if there is just too much to enjoy, too many places to look.
A really great tape that has a real esoteric feel both in its musical efforts and the presentation and though remaining obscure and barely terrestrial it has a real tangible beauty.

http://www.jellecrama.com/puik/

BLUE SHIFT (Night People)

Blue Shift is one girl from Providence, RI who stands facing into a big amplifier and plays the electric violin really violently. The time I saw her play in a Val Verde living room was harsh and shoegazy and cult. Total feedback immersion, shrieking string-scrapes, hair flying, back to the crowd, head down. This self-titled CS on Night People is a cut-and-paste document of some semi-recent live sets of hers, and finds her in a far more classical mood. Several of the pieces are accompanied by stomping drums, but the majority are just an unamplified violin bowing out some weird, wandering note-flurries and then stopping. Lo-fi, mild, fine. Way less raging/demented than the epic “incinerated humanoid” cover art suggests. Maybe I caught her on a wild night. Or a drunk one. I do recall Aaron from Sword Heaven standing on his head in a kiddy pool screaming across the hillside.

SHIFT / ROMANCE split "Gateshead Sessions" (Unrest Productions)

Shift's "Gateshead 1 & 2" starts out deceivingly with a staticy radio blaring a "Top of the Pops" style crooner. Soon enough this dissolves into a more predictable wall of distortion that continues with some change-ups for the duration. The sound quality is great, as per usual for Martin Willford's work, but weighs thin compared to Romance's offering as well as the rest of the Shift discography. While not on cassette, I heartily recommend Shift's excellent recent full-length "Unable to Abide the Silence of the World," also on Unrest, to anyone with interest in this project or modern UK power electronics in general. But back to "Gateshead:" on the flip, Dean Glaister's "Organ Builder's Manual" begins with a distant orchestral sample and bit by bit a low crackling gives way to the trademark arrhythmic cut-up blasts that Romance is best known for. Solid head-banging material! The overall package has a crisp offset design and is housed in a handmade slipcase. Fans of either of these projects would not be disappointed.