Asmus Tietchens, Vidna Obmana

2024 stock. Shifts is a solo project by the omnipresent Frans de Waard, founder of Kapotte Muziek, Beequeen, Goem, as well as other solo projects including Quest, Captain Black, and more recently, Freiband. Shifts started life in 1995 with the purpose of producing ambient music by means of the guitar. In the period 1995-1999 Shifts released seven 7″s, two 10″s, three CDs, six CD-Rs and 2 LPs and contributed to several compilations. Shifts has performed four times in concert (1998, 1999 and 2002) and once in a live collaboration–as yet still unreleased–with :zoviet*france: (1998). The music of Shifts consists of finely interwoven patterns of guitars played by motor driven devices, with added studio effects and extensive use of special recording techniques.

This project is the first collaboration in a studio for Shifts. Simultaneously (and separately) Asmus Tietchens and Vidna Obmana had proposed to Frans de Waard to do a collaborative release where they would reprocess recordings by Shifts. Frans had known Asmus Tietchens and Vidna Obmana since the mid-eighties, from the days when cassette culture was a vital form of musical expression. Since Tietchens and Vidna Obmana worked together before, it seemed more than appropriate then to combine these two efforts. The sound material supplied to each artist was the same, a decision made because they were curious about comparing the final results.