Shapeshifter

Shapeshifter is a New Zealand live band whose music brings drum and bass into a setting shaped by musicians playing together. Formed in Christchurch, the group draws on soul, jazz, funk, rock, and electronic music, with vocals and instrumental performance central to its identity. The live approach gives the music a different character from a DJ-led presentation, while retaining the rhythmic speed and bass of drum and bass.

The 2006 album Soulstice is an important point in that recording history. Made around sessions on the Kaikōura coast, it includes Bring Change, New Day Come, and One. Its credits bring together the band’s singer Pdigsss with guest voices including Ladi6, while Evan Short of Concord Dawn contributed to the production.

The album’s own notes connect the setting with its musical atmosphere, describing a period in which the group could focus on writing away from the usual demands of performing. The resulting songs give melody and vocals space within the arrangements, rather than treating the live instruments as an embellishment on an otherwise finished electronic track.

Two decades later, Soulstice remained a focus for the band, with a twentieth-anniversary tour documented in 2026. That return to the record places it within an ongoing performance history, rather than leaving it only as a catalogue milestone. For listeners discovering Shapeshifter, the album and the live-band approach are useful starting points: drum and bass is a central part of the sound, but its wider influences are equally important to understanding how the music is made.