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Shapeshifter is Malcolm Goodman. The music is possessed, like a Korean skyscraper ghosted by the murder of a computer virus hacked to pieces with an Apple G3. Shapeshifter has mined some seriously dark trench in hell to provide bloodless material for this aural demon. The spirit of early-model electronic abstraction holds sway over Shapeshifter's glass tower; Ussachevsky hovers and Xenakis spooks. The inevitable exorcism happens halfway through the album, in a schism of ambient drone and human breath that stutters with a keyboard death-rattle and a low bass that nearly tears apart speaker cones. Then the poltergeist is let loose, and the album runs amok. Sound files collide and spit bits in a splinter of cellular corruption. It's all very frightening and impressive. Goodman's first Shapeshifter album sits in the company of Autechre's Chiastic Slide and Richard Devine's Aleamapper - these are three albums that display a gift for sound design truly beyond the scope of modern music.
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