Franco-Swiss composer François J. Bonnet, aka Kassel Jaeger, returns to Shelter Press with a new solo album, Shifted in Dreams. Bonnet has been working closely with Shelter Press for several years now, whether as a musician (Zauberberg, Swamps / Things), theorist (The Music To Come), or director of INA GRM (SPECTRES, Recollection GRM, Portraits GRM). Each of these directions taken, each of these actions carried out, is an exploration and an attempt to understand the deep causes of music, its own potential and its possible appearances.

Shifted in Dreams is a continuation of such a research, but takes a somewhat deviated path. If we use the image of music as a paradoxical mountain, as an unreachable “Mont Analogue”, this album tries to opens up a way that at first seems simpler, marked out, known and recognized thanks to the distinct presence of common harmonic and temporal elements. This path, however, is simple only in appearance, for soon it becomes less clear, its contours get blurred, drowned in the mist. Silhouettes form in the distance, like uncertain shadows. We grope our way forward, in this infra-sensitive thickness of the world outside of signs. The recognized markers disappear, giving way, at best, to reminiscences, but increasingly making way to qualities, occurrences, events. We leave the known world of musical codes to join that of sound apparitions, their memorial imprints and the impressions they produce.

Following a compositional approach stemming from the musique concrète tradition, without adopting a structuralist aesthetic, Shifted in Dreams explores a wide range of instruments and techniques, going seamlessly from instrumental improvisation to field recording, via micro-editing and the use of asynchronous loops. Mixing the electronic sounds of an ARP 2500 synthesizer with the acoustic drones of a positive organ, articulating guitar layers with the resonance of the Cristal Baschet, bringing together recordings of slamming windows and sound produced by complex modular synthesis patches, Bonnet offers a rich and generous palette of sounds, inviting a constantly renewed sonic investigation.

Shifted in Dreams, despite its title, is not a dreamlike record. The dream here does not designate the symbolical space of interpretation and reinterpretation of reality through cultural patterns. It designates the intermediate, blurred and uncertain state where the reality of signs loses its consistency, while, paradoxically, the reality of senses and impressions becomes imperative, obvious. The reality of demons.