Shed aka Rene Pawlowitz aka EQD

Shedding the past was one of the best Techno records of the past decade. Very detailed and layered if maybe a bit paranoid and claustrophobic. It still my favorite album to test audio systems and headphones. Resident Advisor agrees with me. Their users and writers voted for it as best album 2008. This year's the Traveller is more stripped down but it as some brilliant IDM inspired moments. Helping me sort out my Aphex Twin fix.

Anyone else with me?

fuck yeah

he's the best new techno artist of the last 10 years

For those of you not familiar with his work, here's a little taste (youtube quaLity, mind you):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfqSXtiWB7k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJDJFgDQJmw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXpAjl1wX40

Mindblowing on a clean and loud soundsystem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Gvwea-QLQ&feature=related

dude those are like his worst tracks

i really like 'the bot'.

and 'leave things' is probably uncharacteristic but i can't stop playing it anyway.

dude those are like his worst tracks

― moonship journey to baja

Imagine how his best ones must sound like!

well played

i agree, new album has some great tracks but as a whole ive not been playing it through. Fair play to the guy for experimenting but his best tracks tend to be when he's doing more of a straight detroit thing with boomy berghain facing production (ie well done my son). Check out his older tracks on his own label solocation, all downloadse on boomkat now.

Seeing him do the new album live in london was a pretty dire experience given the energy of his older live sets, htough admittedly you could blame the dire mix of south london club tourist thugs and the noodlearmed electronica boys that made up the crowd and cables atrociously quiet soundsystem

what was it like?

new EQD out now!!

only just heard EQD 005 - awesome stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkSiN4pv__E

reach for the lasers!!

The EQD compilation is just too good.

he has a new album coming out in a week, too! on fire.

SHEDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

"the killer" is totally rugged

anyone catch shed b2b mumdance on rinse FM?

something new or that one from a few years back? I listened to the released one but it's been a while

ah, found it. september this year? checking it out!

last night actually

https://soundcloud.com/rinsefm/mumdance051217

well, I’m behind! thanks the the heads up

https://ostgut.bandcamp.com/album/oderbruch

Oh wow I started this thread almost a decade ago. I always feel stupid reading my younger self.

I still think shedding the past is brilliant and is one of the top 20 electronic albums of the 00’s.

a true artiste is this one, sample track sounds great.

just been blasting this out, lovely album.

This is spectacular. Perhaps his prettiest album?

omg

visiting family in the Midwest where it's cold and gray, perfect introduction to this album

That sample track is an interesting departure, sounds like he's been listening to some Pole?

Moka tbh I was impressed with your thread starter. I just saw in that other thread you mentioned that you got into the music mid-00s which means you quickly developed good taste (or you just started with a strong community to educate you).

Sterbende Alleen, wow. There's a sweeping majesty to it that I'm loving. What would those melodies and timbres usually be associated with? Very cinematic in a way isn't it.

I have to listen with sub-bass. I know it's there, just beyond my reach...

sub-bass yeah... I appreciate the audio equipment test at the beginning of the killer

shed has always been pretty, like a crisp pressed shirt and nice jumper

Loving this one, perfect time of the year for it.

Viborg: thank you! In 2007 my father gifted me his soundsystem and it was my first audiophile-level setup. It was a game changer after hearing music on cheap headphones and Shed quickly became an early obsession. I can’t even remember how I first bumped into it, I think it was the residentadvisor review that piqued my interest but I did consume a lot of music from electronic-focused blogs at the time.

I just saw in that other thread you mentioned that you got into the music mid-00s which means you quickly developed good taste (or you just started with a strong community to educate you).

god save the bastards that do it now

This guy is on fire in 2024. The new Head High with Cassy is almost Sunday (3pm) levels of good. Hoover from earlier is super. Wax 9009 might be my favourite of that series. And I’ve not even got to the other new Head High. I guess the formulas haven’t massively changed. Just as good is the new Sound Stream but save that for another thread.

a new album out last month, rave echoes. sounds really promising so far. i love this one, gorgeous

password (trance mix)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngrwDeeZXjs

Big fan of this guy (especially in his Wax guise). New album is sounding fantastic so far

yeah it's great! his sound design is so massive but he's also very subtle. the subtlety probably highlights the massiveness i guess. there's something very comfortable about this album. it feels like a rave you can live in. it's easy to listen to. reminds me a little bit of barker but obviously a lot more kick-and-bass-forward. i listened to "the final experiment" a lot. and had no idea he'd released two more albums in between that and this new one. ready for a summer shed extravaganza tbh.

it's amazing to me how this guy never puts a foot wrong and yet whenever I speak to dance music people IRL they seem totally unfamiliar with his catalogue

absolutely. no one has heard of him. tbf no one i know in podunkville stateside has heard of a single respected european producer, but like wtf? he's made these huge records, he's released on ostgut ton and now dkmntl. maybe he's a recluse or something. i hope he isn't like a massive dick or whatever.

this one is feeling like an instant classic to me. it's gorgeous and goddamn those beats!! there's a sort of straightforward, simple optimism to it. anthemic without being cloying.

i remember loving oderbruch on release, iirc that one was a little more pastoral? and then i memory-holed him for some reason.

I definitely had an extended period of shed-unawareness after oderbruch. That album definitely was a step back from the usual bangers, and maybe it felt like he was winding that down before popping back with stuff like wax releases more recently. Few people can, like shed has, continuously release big functional tracks over twenty years and still keep people interested. Even still, I needed a break from shed bangers.

it's amazing to me how this guy never puts a foot wrong and yet whenever I speak to dance music people IRL they seem totally unfamiliar with his catalogue

Perhaps it's because while he's consistent and puts out good tracks, it can sometimes fade a bit into the background given what else is out there. I enjoyed The Final Experiment and Oderbruch when they released, but they weren't ground breaking or super memorable and Towards East was inconsistent. Artists like Skee Mask, Special Request et al had more oomph and put out better work in the late teens. Now I feel artists like Priori, Polygonia, DjRUM etc are doing that now.

That said, haven't heard Rave Echoes yet, but it's been on my list

This was very illuminating to me, I didn't know most of those aliases. I don't love it all but there are some incredible bangers in there, especially some of the EQD ones that he considers tools.

https://firstfloor.substack.com/p/the-many-faces-of-shed-part-2

Skee Mask is the complete opposite of Shed to me - I find their music so boring and inert

^^

Skee Mask has def fallen off (still sick when DJing!), but what he was dropping between 2017-2018 is all time. Compro is better than anything Shed has ever released imho

NO

^

I'm not saying Compro is bad. I love the cover, for example.

compro is abletop wallpaper loop techno as is a lot of stuff octobeard big-ups. some people just don't have ears for music.

nah

lol I see no comments on Priori, Polygonia or DjRUM. I guess DjRUM is albetop wallpaper loop techno?

So sensitive basically describing shed as "okay". I can understand Skee Mask as that but to say I don't have an ear for music is getting a bit testy and reactionary

(fwiw I am doing pretty well in ILM Music League, so that statement is a bit objectively wrong)

When Shedding the Past came out in 2008 (and with early releases, from well done my son to the first wax and eqds) it felt ground breaking and memorable, with a kind of oomph that felt novel. It’s just that he’s been honing that sound since 2010 and the context has changed since. Before objekt, skee mask, djrum, spec req, priori etc started making much of the best music of the last 15 years (hate to be so controversial, but I like shed AND skee mask) it really felt like shed was making the most interesting techno out there. To me, he’s kind of been doing victory laps since the early 10s.

Honestly, Shed's debut remains his best album imho

rateyourmusic.com

I guess DjRUM is albetop wallpaper loop techno?

yep

ILM Music League

what the hell is ILM Music League? it sounds like something you would be into so that's cool i guess.

So sensitive basically describing shed as "okay"

it's more like.. the evidence you give for your opinions and your rateyourmusic.com approach to music are all very vague and superficial. i find it pretty grating. mostly easy to ignore but sometimes you kind of take the air out of the room. imho.

you do a disservice to the music you like by putting it on a scoreboard and having the most thoughtless opinions about it imaginable.

Let’s get in the ring mfsrs! Just in terms of engineering quality’s Shed is just clearly next level from all that boring Priori crap and especially that djarum “throw everything at the wall” crap that is unlistenable and wouldnt even make cool car commercial music or Matthew Barney soundtracks

I’m so tired of groundbreaking electronica that happens to also be unlistenable

Literally was responding to someone saying why Shed is not as well known, and I basically was saying "it makes sense, he's okay", the fact this has invoked so much ire is kinda wild.

what the hell is ILM Music League? it sounds like something you would be into so that's cool i guess.

MUSIC LEAGUE - a way to gamify your music taste

It's fun! My first time playing; and quite a few other notable ILM posters are in it as well, including the person who created this very thread. Apparently this is the 7th go about, organized and participated by ILM peeps. And yes it's scoreboarding taste. Kinda like Fantasy DJ or something.

you do a disservice to the music you like by putting it on a scoreboard and having the most thoughtless opinions about it imaginable.

jfc okay then. Feel like this is a criticism you could make against every ILM poster who has ever posted here since the beginning of the century but okay. Noted.

Literally was responding to someone saying why Shed is not as well known, and I basically was saying "it makes sense, he's okay"

boxedjoy pointed that out, and i echoed him.

"he's okay." a very generic statement about quality presented as objective. but then all the reasons you give for it - comparisons to other artists with more "oomph" - are just, well, they're just your opinion. you're making an objective statement about quality based on your opinion. and then you are making a claim that that is the reason why he is off people's radars? there are so many reasons why someone might not be a hotly discussed techno producer in 2026 that have a direct relationship. age, personality, willingness to do or not do press, level of participation in the hype machine, etc. your opinion about their music's quality or lack thereof .. probably has very little to do with their visibility.

jfc okay then. Feel like this is a criticism you could make against every ILM poster who has ever posted here since the beginning of the century but okay. Noted.

a lot of people don't do this. they have a personal reaction, they express enthusiasm. they keep their thoughts rooted in the particular and in observation. maybe they venture something a little more general, untested, conjectural. there used to be more of a tendency of music nerd dudes to do blanket quality statements and construct hierarchies of good better and best. to present their opinion as objective reality with an air of unearned authority. it's still around here to a small degree. personally i'm not a fan of that tendency.

honestly, thanks for sharing about the music league. that sounds fun.

i got nothing personal against you, octobeard. i'm glad you've got your finger on the pulse. i like that you post and share. ultimately my opinion doesn't matter though. you have every right to be here and do your thing. i'll take what i can from ya and i wish you the best.

i have to say, though, to your point, that he has been doing fairly limited variations on the same thing since the beginning of his career, even with all of those alternate names, like ed b points out. i can definitely see how that is a factor in how much reception he is receiving now. i would argue that he has developed and aged well - that he hasn't really stagnated - but that it has been subtle and organic. which is a hard thing to sell, and maybe no one is really trying.

they have a personal reaction, they express enthusiasm.

No worries map. and hey! I have the honor of some of my quotes here being plucked for a couple of those legendary Whiney "overreaction polls" that ended up getting locked. I've been critiqued for every type of post here (some quite justifiably too ha)

So yeah I can be a bit reductive at times, it's all good - as long as we're being civil, it's just music discourse. I don't take any of this personally. I'll just throw on some cans, rip a blunt, and enjoy some bobbins from people who are clearly doing it wrong.

btw - I still haven't listened to his new one, perhaps that is what goes on the cans tonight.

"over-enthusiasm" not overreaction

Most embarrassing overpraise of the just released 'Ears' album on Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith thread

oh man this was fun to reread

What I've heard of Polygonia is interesting but not the kind of stuff that causes me to feel physically inspired the way that when I hear something like "Rave (Dirt Mix)" or "Password (Trance Mix)" that makes me want to instantly down tools and start moving my body.

What I've heard of Djrum was proper Emperor's New Clothes music for me, really interesting sound design I guess but absolutely no sense of urgency or fun and certainly not enough to make me investigate properly.

I guess this may be a "I just like the bangers" Me Problem though.

That’s basically how I’ve felt about polygonia and djrum

I take issue with calling out priori (who I don’t really see footing in with the other people listed) and who I think is my fav producer of the 20s

This seems like a good time to admit that while what Skee Mask does sounds cool (ravey bits sorta dubbed out with a lot of space, to be reductive), I've never been able to make it through a whole album, or even a track really. I don't know why it doesn't connect with me, but there you go.

shed slots into that niche of artists that had a solid landmark release, continues to create solid music, and does what I'd assume are solid live sets a handful of times a year. it's been almost twenty years since he really burst out on the scene and yes I've stopped counting my grey hairs long ago

high attention longevity is a formula not many artists can crack and outside of switching up your style, making bangers that get played out heavily, having a residency or endless dj set tours, or lining up a procession of collaborations, there's not really a way to get the top line of attention for more than a brief period imo and none of those are really this particular artist

I think this is correct, though it sucks for formerly hyped artists who are still doing great work but can't possibly hope to regain the momentum of their early days. In many ways, this forum is a good barometer for this phenomenon. Notice how infrequently the threads for Andy Stott, Burial, The Field, or Border Community are bumped these days compared to 20 years (!!) ago.

Warp / Warp-related artists might be the exception that proves the rule?

some threads that get barely bumped still translate consistently to sold out crowds, though. if you’re over 50 and can play a giant set at a handful of more niche festivals and move a modest number of albums as both a release and as promo it probably beats having to run around all year even if you have another day job

Yeah, I don't think hype or being in the critical conversation (RIP) means anything these days if you're already on the festival/club circuit. I wonder if you even need to make new music.

I have fumbled real things of consequence in life but one of my greatest music festival fumbles was being at another venue when Shed and Actress were playing around the corner in 2010 :(

Ahaha, I was at that set. No regrets! But would not have minded seeing DDS