Post Description

Here is the 3rd section of Redshift’s Wild series. As on the first two ones, Mark Shreeve concocts us a fabulous journey in time with extracts from concerts with early Redshift material played, as well as 2 unreleased tracks; one in concert and the other in studio. A stationary voyage cause we are mainly in the first years of the band, but an intensive one with live performances which let hear all the sequential spite of this group to chthonian harmonies. 

Recorded in concert at the Hampshire Jam VII, in November 2008, Redshift 08 is an adaptation of the eponym track of the very first Redshift released in 1996. We find the same spirit and the same fusion between the ethereal ambient and the heavy rhythms of the original, but with an airier and a suppler approach. Fans of TD will be delighted to hear a spectral which contains the beautiful Mellotron lines of Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares. 
Shift to Blue is a new version of Blueshift, which encloses the first Redshift. A reworked version, which suffered of a sequencer performance, during the concert. Problem corrected from the rehearsal recordings, where Mark Shreeve mixed both performances, giving a superb result. Beyond this problem inherent to live performances, Shift to Blue is amputated by about twenty minutes, focusing much more on the sequential rhythmic approach which oscillates between the sweetness and the fury, on magnificent synthesized melodious strata and a divine Mellotron which preserves the main part of the ethereal movement but not soporific of the 1st version. I prefer, and by far, Shift to Blue to Blueshift which I found rather long on the first Redshift opus. 
Schlachthof-fünf is the last encore, and the missing one, of the 2004 Eindhoven concert which gave us Toll. This way, we finally have the whole concert. A magnificent track, in the purest Redshift tradition, which starts with scattered electric piano keys which float in an ethereal cosmos. Limpid, these keys are wrapped by spectral breaths and bizarre noises which may come from doors of darkness as from dusts which the deprived archangels let drag when they furrow the purgatory. Of this nothingness in suspension is drawing a sound arc which waddles as a devilish bed song, kicking away a sequence which roars out its heavy reverberations to introduce the booming guitar, to riffs of steel and howling solos, of James Goddard. A magnificent piece which allies the fragility of spectres to the big metallic reverberations, under the mechanical sniggers of Goblins moulded in tempered steel. Great pure Redshift! Loud and sombre, where are hiding angelic melodies in an immense sound mess. The best track on this Wild.
A caustic breath opens the first measures of Broken World, an unreleased track composed in 1996. The breath permutes to dark choirs which float in between world, under a symphonic synth which filters very near the soil of Mark Shreeve on Legion and Assassin, there where psychedelic streaks penetrate this long dark intro, paving the way to a sequential movement which hiccough under an austere synth. Broken World does not explode. It follows a harmonious tangent in a dark universe on sequences sometimes heavy and howling, sometimes docile and peaceful in a harmonious musical paradox. A paradox which is the links between Mark Shreeve solo works and Redshift first opuses. 

Wild 3 is a wonderful gift which every fans of Redshift have to possess. It is also an excellent way to discover the sound universe of the English group who cuts in the ethereal lengths to exploit profoundly the heavy sequences which are the trademark of Shreeve and cie. Redshift 08 and Blueshift are two surprising reconstructions of the first works of Redshift. If that can displease certain purists, that is going to please those who, as me, believes that the music has to evolve with its time and its gears during concerts. Mark Shreeve invites fans of the mythical group to a sound orgy which gets out of darkness entrails. You got to admit it’s kind of hard, even impossible, to refuse such invitation. 

2009. Sylvain Lupari