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If aliases in the world of techno indicated split personalities, Rene Pawlowitz would surely qualify for dissociative identity disorder treatment. A lot of producers record and release under a lot of different names, but few more than Pawlowitz. If you were to link a distinct party personality to each of his monikers, you'd arrive at something like this: Head High would be that dude who loses his shit in the middle of the dance floor solely to incite frenzy; Wax is the one guy who just won't go home, refusing to cede defeat to daybreak; while Pawlowitz's most prominent alias, Shed, is that curmudgeony fuck who stands in the corner and only talks about how good music used to be. Crafted with worn elements of the electronic cannon, his third LP as Shed doesn't offer much that's fresh. Rather, it's nostalgia and recontextualization that drive this effort. Spooky techno serves as the only constant while he works in a number of familiar rave signifiers of yesterday. The percolating gasps under the weighty steamroll of "I Come by Night," the enveloping stutter to nowhere on "You Got the Look," and the divine piano stabs on album closer "Follow the Leader" are all indicative of mastery, by whatever name you want to call him.
