Across the first minute of Isaac Sherman’s A Shifting Pattern, brief filmic phrases—close views of flowers and buds, each between 1 and 5 frames—appear at irregular intervals, generally in the range of every two seconds, as the soundtrack hums with outdoor ambience. A single, quick synth tone signals a turn: the montage accelerates, drawing the Markopoulos-style opening into outright flicker (Sherman continues to make precise use of black frames, creating a dense composition of afterimages, layered and fugal), as saxophone and flute join the synthesizer and field recordings in a similarly accumulative arc that moves from sparse 3-note phrases into a full arrangement which sounds like the record Laurie Spiegel never released on Mego. The botanical world is among the more common subjects for the flicker film, but when matched with the witty sense of fleeting pleasure imbued by the soundtrack, Sherman’s sumptuous and extravagant floral still lives—with their deft handling of light and shadow, of contrasts in color and scale—feel appropriately fresh. —Phil Coldiron