- A pitch-perfect tribute to late-2000s bass & techno mutations.
- At this point, it feels like René Pawlowitz flips through the past 30 years of dance music, picks a spot and gets to work on a convincing, updated version. This time around, he's landed in the late 2000s, when tracks like TRG's "Broken Heart" and Appleblim and Pev's "Circling" were doing damage with their post-dubstep mix of syncopated perc, bass weight and thick atmosphere.
"And [Pinch, AKA Rob Ellis, is] still doing this really good label, Tectonic, which is great," Pawlowitz said back in 2017. "It's a shame the whole cool dubstep thing went down because of the whole EDM thing with no realness. That was not good for all the guys like Rob who's serious, who knows what he's saying. For all these cool guys that invented the whole thing, it's sad that happened."
The three tracks on Shed's Tectonic are a clear homage to the label and the era. "Try" is a heavy stepper with subtle vocal sampling and a string-laden breakdown. "Sweep" features an alarmist piano line that would light up a bleary-eyed room. "Box's" swung snares and "Try's" mix of half-time kicks and 16th-note cymbals position these tracks squarely in the exploratory zone between bass music and techno. Some artists don't steal from the past, they reimagine it.
Tracklist01. Box
02. Sweep
03. Try