Octavia M Sheffner is an Almaty, Kazakhstan-based producer, writer and visual artist. Their music is a kaleidoscopic collage, hypnotic while perpetually reformatting, longform with a hook focused immediacy. Previous releases have appeared on labels including Suite 309 and Blorpus Editions, alongside a sprawling catalogue of self-released albums and aliases. With 'Shivering;' their new tape on Bezirk, this approach steps into a darker zone without losing the vibrant energy that makes their work so crucial.

The tracks on 'Shivering;' were recorded in November 2022, which contributed to their murkier tone. “For me, November is a cursed month. It has a sour, dour aura to it. A time of transition when the weather won’t make up its mind. I was going through November fever, a sense of uneasiness and unreality. And that’s partly why I made this really melancholy, distant, voidy record,” Octavia explains.

When listening to these tracks, you get sucked into a hypnagogic netherworld. There’s a feeling of descent, but no despair. An acquiescence perhaps, to slipping into the darkness and taking in its trippy scenery. The first track, ‘Eris & Aneris...’ comes from Sheffner recycling an older recording from another project. Propelled by a chugging metallic pulse, snippets of vocals and other sound blend into a blur over the perpetual motion groove. Things deepen on ‘Insomnie a deux’, compiled from a bank of Youtube vinyl rips of everything from church chorals to old folk songs. “Vinyl rips to Youtube have all this annoying high end to them,” Octavia explains. “These clicks that I really can’t stand. I spent so long trying to filter them out, and that’s how the track ended up sounding so washed out.”

Like so much of Octavia M Sheffner’s music, each track acts as a nexus point, an intersection of strands from the online archive somehow wrestled into, if not harmony, a peculiar equilibrium. “I think of the album as being two spiral staircases eating each other, like an ouroboros,” they explain.