The late nineties were arguably a heyday of free improv and experimental guitar sound, with veterans and godfathers of the genre, from Keith Rowe to Fred Frith and Glenn Branca, still at the peak of their form, and a plethora of younger noise-making solo guitarists filling a gap between laptop musicians and proverbial ‘rock bands’ (both uprising indie hypnagogic/dreampop acts and numerous shoegaze/post-rock/ethereal revivalists). But a Belgian label (K-RAA-K)³, known from the day one for disrupting and challenging any established genre boundaries and definitions, launched their own guitarimproseries in 1999 with quite a twist. An opening release, Mechanica by Shifts, was as much of a typical ‘guitar improvisation’ album as Frans de Waard himself is a guitarist (or any instrument player, for that matter) – i.e., none at all.Under Shifts alias, Waard was creating a familiar, ‘trademark’ blend of highly abstract isolationist ambient soundscapes, except that he only used a solo guitar with few sound effects as a sound source. Initial recordings were post-processed and layered to create a resulting immersive sound structure, much like on Steve Reich’s early tape pieces. FdW had tried out different approaches and techniques as part of this project, such as preparing the instrument with sandpaper and other non-musical objects or customizing it with additional pick-ups. But the most memorable and notable was his usage of a primitive belt-driven motorized device to mechanically strum the guitar (what FdW in retrospect described as a tribute to Remko Scha).Mechanica definitely sounds like it was recorded primarily with this technique. Unlike other Shifts works, especially a later cycle Vertonen where a guitar is often post-processed and edited beyond recognition, this album is celebrating and really highlighting timbres and resonances of the instrument itself, or rather guitar strings. Waard is approaching this main sonic concept from different angles, exploring a gradual escalation and transmutation of a meditative, monotonous, repetitive and mechanical strumming sound, slowly shifting and washed away by a wave of the same sound, but in different tonality and frequency range. The album is split into eight parts, with each track seemingly unrelated and isolated from each other. An opening piece is full of suspenseful, sinister industrial rumble & rattle – a squeaky old bicycle railing down the cemetery road on the full moon night, or perhaps an amplified and contact-mic’ed ventilation shaft in the abandoned building. A few more compositions, such as Part 2 and Part 4, are also focused on the raspy, jerky sound of a string picked up, while others are playing up more homogeneous, formless and shapeless ambient soundscapes.Mechanica is a terribly underrated album, which I never saw included in any lists or selections, playlists, mixtapes or radio broadcasts, whether dedicated to drone/ambient/experimental or guitar-improv music. Never read a single review either, even FdW’s own Vital Weekly webzine ignored this CD! A unique and methodical exercise in repetition and diversity, this album shows how a very simple performing technique can be turned into a vast specter of sounds – a remarkably vivid, profound and almost transcendental acoustic journey. It’s just as worth listening as any other Waard’s works, or numerous seminal albums by Francisco López, Phill Niblock, Toshiya Tsunoda, Jeph Jerman, and other sound artists who are known and praised for their ability to transmute and chrysophify an ordinary aural matter into unimaginable and superhuman acoustic words.This album is also consistent with (K-RAA-K)³ output since this rebellious and radically different label was always known for disruption rather than conformity. Even though it arrived at a time when many labels and experimental artists were dabbling in unconventional guitar, it was light years away from a more predictable and established sound of solo noise guitarists of the time. Frans de Waard’s relationship with K-RAA-K further continued when he participated in (k-raa-k)³ Festival '99 at Democrazy, Gent. This was one of the only five concerts ever played by FdW as Shifts, and it was documented on Two Dates CD-R, released on Jun 1999 by Waard’s own Bake Records label (and re-issued digitally in 2014 as Four Dates, with two additional live performances).