Since 2014, The Shifters, hailing from the northern suburbs of Melbourne, have been crafting music that breathes tension, repetition, and space, music that moves like a body in slow motion, each note claiming its own territory. Their songs do not announce themselves; they establish themselves, repeat, and gradually ensnare the listener in a near-hypnotic state, where every detail seems to come alive.

    The band’s sound is built from insistent guitars, drifting keyboards, and a rhythm section that propels everything forward like a relentless engine. Echoes of 1960s garage, stripped of excess, collide with the dry urgency of late-70s, early-80s punk, yet the result is unmistakably contemporary, intimate, and deeply sensory. Listening to The Shifters conjures images: long neon-lit streets, engines idling, tension crawling across the skin. This is music you feel as much as you hear.

    Lyrically, the band inhabits unexpected territories. Their songs read like fragments of military history, geopolitical observation, and fleeting everyday moments, often threaded with subtle, dry humour. Each track offers a meticulous glance at conflict, the absurdities of modern life, or overlooked historical episodes, transforming complex subjects into immediate sonic experiences. The vocals do more than narrate; they guide the listener through open-ended narrative landscapes, where repetition becomes atmosphere, space, and sensation.

    From their first cassette releases in 2014, The Shifters have built an extensive, internationally distributed catalogue, working with labels across Australia, the USA, the UK, and Europe. Their output includes EPs, split records, and full-length albums such as Have a Cunning Plan (2018, Trouble in Mind) and Open Vault (2022, Adagio830), documenting both the evolution and breadth of their sound, maintaining coherence, nerve, and identity throughout.

    The current line-up is Miles Jansen (guitar, vocals), Louise Russell (keyboards, vocals), Chris Brown (guitar), Stella Rennex (bass), Abe Pedroza (drums), and Natasha Havir Smith (violin), balances minimalism with expansion, crafting dense, rhythmic soundscapes that reveal themselves more with every listen.

    Over the past decade, The Shifters have brought this universe to stages across Australia and, in 2019, toured Europe, playing in France, Belgium, England, Scotland, and Wales. They have shared bills with Dry Cleaning, Fat White Family, Uranium Club, UV Race, Exek, The Pheromoans, Terry, and Constant Mongrel, situating themselves firmly within a scene that values identity, risk, and consistency over immediate visibility.

    The Shifters inaugurate the Soundscope column, a space dedicated to artists who captivate and challenge us, and whom we believe our readers will want to discover and dwell with. Music that does not reveal itself instantly, that creates imagery, tension, and narratives that spark the imagination, music that invites you into its world and keeps you coming back.

Written by Sofia