Last Updated on April 26, 2022, 7:01 PM | Published: April 26, 2022
OKLAHOMA CITY (Free Press) — Once upon a time (around 1981,) guitar wizard and musical mad scientist Adrian Belew, known for backing up David Bowie, Talking Heads, and even Frank Zappa, joined up with the dark, heady, mind-blowingly technical and legendary prog-rock outfit King Crimson to create something weird and wild.
Right around 40 years later, Benjamin Rosfeld, Ben Askren, and Matt Robertson, three young students from Oklahoma City, decided to pool their shared influences, as well as their disparate interests and inspirations (as well as a shared love of Belew,) into the equally weird and wild SHIFT.
It’s not that you absolutely have to know and appreciate that Belew-era King Crimson material to get on SHIFT’s wavelength, but it definitely helps as a kind of roadmap for how a little group of players can meld their technical chops and theoretical musicality into something so wacky, so eclectic, and so engaging.
Much like that strange and endlessly fun 1980’s period when prog-rock drew from jazz, pop, early electro, and world music all in equal measure, SHIFT’s debut album “Timelines,” dropping this Friday, April 29th, is a joyride through the staggering skills and melting-pot sensibilities of the band.
Recorded primarily alongside Rosfeld’s father, Ken, in the studio and production space that he designed and operates, the band was able to work and take their time in developing a signature sound out of a young lifetime’s worth of varied influences.
“Ben comes from a classic rock background, I come from an electronic music background, and Matt comes from jazz,” Rosfeld told me. “Prog-rock has often been, in my view, the unification of all three of those genres. So naturally, the three of us, though we are frankly very different musicians, are unified by a love of groups like King Crimson and Mahavishnu Orchestra, or the more contemporary Black Midi.”
All of these elements weave in and out of “Timelines,” mixing, matching, and even conflicting in increasingly compelling ways.
It’s about as classically “prog” as can be, and fans of Yes, early Genesis, and of course Crimson should take note immediately, but there is just as much to intrigue the hardcore jazz fusion audiences of Herbie Hancock and Jaco Pastorious or the cult fanatics of the greatest weirdo pop from Devo to Oingo Boingo.
Opener “Origin,” appropriately, keeps starting over, never content to be just one thing. A towering cathedral organ intro in 11/8 time crashes into a chaotic 5/8 chorus and then back again, all anchored beneath Rosfeld’s sci-fi carnival barker croon.
And then, as if to challenge even their own self-labeling as prog, the second track “A Decade Feels Different Every Time” pops in with a slow-jam groove and a liquid bassline that would fit right into Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories.”
For all of the obvious musical fun and unabashed goofiness, though, there’s a clear earnestness and honesty throughout. The stylistic left turns are never tossed away with a “look at what we can do,” they’re calculated and genuine and feel like they come from these players pushing themselves to discover new avenues and textures to explore.
Even conceptually and lyrically, the sheen of science fiction and literature on the surface only barely hides the very real concerns of nuclear and environmental catastrophe.
“Assemble” tells the story of a robot housing a human brain attempting to reconcile memories of humanity, and closer “In Fields” makes all of those themes more blatant and unified by including a sample of “Dune” author Frank Herbert pleading to the world decades ago to begin a legitimate shift toward renewable energies before it’s too late.
“Timelines” somehow feels like both a labor of love from a group of focused craftsmen and a fun, eccentric experiment from a group of friends all at once. They’ve taken all of these seemingly conflicting pieces and ideas and jumbled them up naturally inside their heads and hearts, so what comes out feels shockingly organic and personal even while being technical beyond the abilities of most of their peers.
“We’ve enjoyed calling ourselves ‘the post-pop experiment,’ because we feel that’s the best way to describe our ‘genre,’” Rosfeld said. “This has been a lot of hard work, but we’re very excited about it.”
“Timelines,” the debut full-length album by SHIFT drops this Friday, April 29th, on streaming services.
Follow the band on Instagram @shift.band and on Bandcamp at shifttheband.bandcamp.com.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
