Ben Shirken aka Ex Wiish is best known on home turf for organising the record label and performance series 29 Speedway, home to multimedia shows by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Poncili Creación, Debit, Pent, James K at various venues. He also performs in free jazz group, Nu Jazz with Dan Orlowski of Deli Girls. ’Shads of Axel’ is his debut album of ambient and concrète sound designs shaped into a sort of gamer narrative that places the listener as “disoriented main player respawned into a harrowing, metallic landscape, wandering through cable ridden labyrinths, caught in progress traps as digital noises grind past submerged cityscapes.”

The work conjures comparison with 0PN and Buttechno in an hour long trip careening from widescreen soudnscaing to fast forward electro on ‘Externa Port’, and downbeat illbient of ‘A Passive Wave’, taking in resonant ambient whorls of ‘Today, My Friend’ with Gabrielle Ledet and Dorothy Carlos, and side quest into OOBE-like ambient techno, fluttering metallic airlock ambience, and lush artificial vistas, completing with an epic Enya-via-Julianna Barwick-esque flourish in ‘Dreaming ∑ Different Time Zone’, a collaboration with Sophia Lucie.