The idea that this was noise rock and “organised chaos” was intriguing enough for me to want to listen to it. A Shape are from France, and this is their second album.
Away we go with the mind-blowing “Black Mamba”. Yes it’s noise. Clanking guitars, heavy percussion and a wall of noise blow across the scene. The vocalist sounds like he’s disturbed – know the feeling, mate – and it all adds up to psychological torture … and intriguing music. If you can’t take the heat and all that. I’m in. A Shape know what to do with sound. “Echoes” has a militaristic beat and is not as disciplined as this might sound, because of the fuzz rock sound, the sound effects and the descent into manic chaos. At the risk of national stereotyping, I do find that French bands have a special creative flair and this comes through here, in spite of it sounding all over the place. The rather splendid “Echoes” branches out into slow melancholic emotion of a post-metal kind, well in a noise rock kind of way. Fuzzy, grungy, unclear, harsh – that’s “Morning Faces”. It’s not the sort of face you’d want to be confronted by in the morning. It’s more the continuation of a nightmare with a bit of structural anarchy thrown in. The vocals are not unlike Talking Heads’s David Byrne. They’re in your face, manic, yet from another distant place. They are the perfect match for the musical warfare of songs like “Crave” with its mix of 90s rock fuzz and extreme metal. It’s hard to get hold of. I’d say go with the flow, but it’s like a tap being turned on and off so there is no real flow. And yet there is. The disturbance comes from the sound effects and layers of strange and both recognisable and unconventional structures.
Want extreme noise? Listen to the manic world of “Hush”. More metallic drum banging follows. Walls shake. It’s “Lungs”. A saxophone wails as the merciless beat is banged out and the narrator tells his story before howling like a wolf. For A Shape, this is normal. It wouldn’t be in any other world. More sax introduces the weirdly distorted world of “Vertical Flex”. Bad Dream would be an alternative title. It’s hard-hitting and strangling in its deliberate cacophony, yet it sucks us up and sweeps us along. Clever. There was a little moment of Hawkwind’s “Space Ritual” but that’s as near to any known normality as this was going to get. We go from extreme to sludgy and woozy, aided by a vocalist who really needs to visit his psychiatrist. He makes a rapid recovery in time for the groovy “Random Error” – groove lines are plentiful in all this experimental noise experience. A post black ring carves through “Random Error”, giving it an extra layer of atmosphere. After the harsh “Thirst Trip”, the sinister mood of “Trans” cloaks itself around us. The sax gives a midnight air while a bleak repetitive rhythm suggests hopelessness and the narrator utters his dark words. It’s a mean world. It ends. Sleep tight, and don’t have too many nightmares. “Iron Pourpre” won’t help you.
The shape is that of bananas. The world of “Iron Pourpre” is bananas. It’s unconventional and it’s very creative.
(8/10 Andrew Doherty)
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