Fittingly for a reissue in Captured Tracks’ Shoegazing Archives series, the history of A Folding Sieve is slightly hazy. The Austin trio’s album first appeared in 1995 as a six song EP credited to shiFt, on their hometown’s tiny ND records. Following a subsequent 7” single (a delicate run through The Jean-Paul Sartre Experience’s lonesome Own Two Feet, included here), shiFt renamed themselves Should, releasing an expanded – and now out of print – version of the album on their own Words On Music label in 2002. This new reissue loses a couple of songs from that edition (including an 18th Dye cover), but adds half a dozen more.

In 1994, when A Folded Sieve was recorded, shoegazing was already out of favour in its British birthplace, as most of the first wave of UK bands moved beyond the genre’s effects pedals and fringes clichés into commercial indie or further abstraction, or simply faded away. A Folded Sieve shows that shiFt were aware of the forces shaping shoegaze across the Atlantic. The EP is bookended by two sparse tunes, Rolling and Pulling, that owe more to ambient electronica than guitars, in the vein of Slowdive’s hook-up with Brian Eno and Chapterhouse’s Global Communication collaborations of the previous year.

The intervening tracks glide from Spacemen 3 hypnotism (Resonate) to MBV/Ride homage (Feels Like Morning). Marc Ostermeier and Tanya Maus divide lead vocal duties, their voices mixing together smoothly like colours in an oil wheel projector on the melodically liquid Clean.

The numerous bonus tracks inevitably dilute the impact of A Folded Sieve’s symmetrical beauty, although there are a few gems to be found, notably the heavier psych of Brass Burn and lurching guitar pop of Collide.

It’s not quite a lost classic, but following the release of Should’s third album – the crystalline pop suite Like a Fire Without Sound – earlier this year, A Folded Sieve’s re-availability is welcome.

-Stuart Huggett-