- There was a moment when Shed towered over electronic music, and his first two albums, soon to be re-released, remain landmarks. But for many the real magic happened on his EPs, which were smart, unfussy distillations of house and techno under now-legendary aliases like Wax and EQD. The heat has come off Shed's club productions lately, but they haven't gone entirely cold, and the whack-a-mole alias game continues.
A key node is the Power House label, whose sound—a mixture of sexy '90s house and warehouse techno—says a lot about where Shed's at right now. With their grainy sonics and brutal compression settings, the tracks sometimes slip from '90s-influence into straighter mimicry. And it sometimes feels like, in the absence of fresh influence, Shed's music is starting to eat its own tail. Take this EP under his WK7 alias. Three of its tracks centre around a diva's vocal hook that goes, "'cause rhythm is love." And sure enough, the stars of the show are Shed's unmistakable rhythms, pumping assemblages of snap and snare shuffle.
This hook on "Rhythm 1" plays out over cresting waves of rave paranoia and ripples hypnotically over sweet chords on "Rhythm 2." The latter track comes in two mixes—Shed likes a re-version these days. The "Power Snap" version gets a stiffer house rudder and "Tripple H" goes zero-gravity breakbeat. All three tracks are satisfying club weapons of the sort Shed can probably make in his sleep. Rounding off the EP, "The Healer"'s cleaner house slouch wouldn't sound out of place on the "Balearic rave"-leaning H2. Shed's aliases always were a rat maze, and there's still room to run.
TracklistA1 Rhythm 1
A2 The Healer
B1 Rhythm 2 (Power Snap Mix)
B2 Rhythm 2 (Tripple H Mix)