The Guardian – 4th July 2008

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What was unusual about Chris Hughes’s 1994 album of Steve Reich adaptations was that it avoided the more obvious dance-friendly directions of the Little Fluffy Clouds era in favour of the early, hardcore stuff. Hughes used the might of 90s music technology to reimagine Drumming and Piano Phase for the age of the compact disc. Even the super-conceptual Pendulum Music (swinging microphones cause intermittent feedback) had a hi-fi makeover, though this may have been Hughes’s idea of a subtle joke. Reissued now, 14 years after its release, Shift sounds as clear and sparkling as you would expect from the meticulous, perfectionist producer behind Wang Chung and Tears for Fears. The reissue’s most extraordinary track is Slow Motion Blackbird, which takes Reich’s instruction to “slow down a recorded sound to many times its original length without changing its pitch” at its word, making a beautifully pastoral and mesmerising work that retains the systems-based integrity of the original idea. – John L Walters