Two years after releasing the acclaimed Crash Recoil, Anthony Child aka
Surgeon returns to Tresor with new LP, Shell~Wave. Retaining the
minimal equipment list and studio-version-of-live-show-sets approach of
the previous album in order to focus on
the work itself, Shell~Wave is a deeply personal document of both
where Surgeon is and has been, converging three decades of
experience with a continued curiosity in the untested.
“To make this project, I had to dig really deep in terms of what my
relationship was to techno; I’ve been involved with it for a really long
time and there’s a lot about it I feel dislocated from, so I had to really
think hard about what techno is to me. I often
get asked “what is techno to you?” but I can’t answer that with words;
this album is the answer.” From the complex, twisting track In fi nite Eye
to the caustic Soul Fire, the eight tracks that make up the body of the
album are single-take explorations of the
vast, hard yet minimal techno Child is synonymous with.
Neatly dividing the record in two, the emotional centre of the record
comes in the form of Dying, a vibrating, beatless piece that with a
mantra-like vocal loop steeped in reverberating e ff ects. Further echoes
of dub production appear throughout the record
as tracks like Divine Shadow, and Empty Cloud have an almost ever-
present mist of reverberation, driven by the appearance of a new delay
unit in the equipment list; while much of the philosophy of Crash
Recoil’s creation is present, the process and the
instruments have changed as Child again switches up his approach to
studio work.
Two years after releasing the acclaimed Crash Recoil, Anthony Child aka
Surgeon returns to Tresor with new LP, Shell~Wave. Retaining the
minimal equipment list and studio-version-of-live-show-sets approach of
the previous album in order to focus on
the work itself, Shell~Wave is a deeply personal document of both
where Surgeon is and has been, converging three decades of
experience with a continued curiosity in the untested.
“To make this project, I had to dig really deep in terms of what my
relationship was to techno; I’ve been involved with it for a really long
time and there’s a lot about it I feel dislocated from, so I had to really
think hard about what techno is to me. I often
get asked “what is techno to you?” but I can’t answer that with words;
this album is the answer.” From the complex, twisting track In fi nite Eye
to the caustic Soul Fire, the eight tracks that make up the body of the
album are single-take explorations of the
vast, hard yet minimal techno Child is synonymous with.
Neatly dividing the record in two, the emotional centre of the record
comes in the form of Dying, a vibrating, beatless piece that with a
mantra-like vocal loop steeped in reverberating e ff ects. Further echoes
of dub production appear throughout the record
as tracks like Divine Shadow, and Empty Cloud have an almost ever-
present mist of reverberation, driven by the appearance of a new delay
unit in the equipment list; while much of the philosophy of Crash
Recoil’s creation is present, the process and the
instruments have changed as Child again switches up his approach to
studio work.
