The Way of the North is the second album by Canadian artist Nick Theriault aka Antigen Shift. Coming from an Industrial, noisy beats background Antigen Shift has pulled back a bit with this record and left more room in the mix for mood to evolve in and around the beats and changes. At times this record rolls along beautifully with syncopated clicky beat structures and gently phasing synths and when you are just about sucked in a clumsy beat will trip you up slightly giving the mix a lagging uneven feel in parts. Unaware if this intentional or not I give Antigen Shift the benefit of the doubt, some looped beats build up such a momentum behind them that sometimes it’s nice to skew that of track Verglas is the first track on the record that really hits it for me; Icy chop sounds skate across the stereo field of my headphones and understated glitch beats intersperse with orchestral drums and vintage synth wahs to create a sound that is dragging me into the icy Canadian waters pictured on the album cover. The sonic terrain in The Way of the North is spacey, almost psychedelic and somehow evocatively sterile. Peacekeeper seems a bit unsure of what it is and could be at home either on the ebm/darkwave dancefloor or drooped into a psy-trance set, at times i think Antigen Shift may need to look a bit further afield for source material as i hear in one intro a sample i am familiar with from a sample-source library. Refuge pulls me back into the record with similarly fractured rhythms and massive bass kicks atop a glacial underlay, this is seems to be where Antigen Shift is most comfortable and there is some sincere composition going on here. The dark drum and bass style has definitely filtered in to this record, at some times too formulaicly but The Way of the North will take you places.
Scot Cotterrell
