The French four-piece A Shape released their debut Inlands this week via Jelodanti/Atypeek Music. A Shape features guitarist Eric Pasquiet, vocalist Sasha Andrès, bassist Mathieu Le Gouge, as well as drummer Anthony Serina, and their new album was recorded in 2016 by audio engineer Johanne Buff and mixed by Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo. Playing a brooding style of post-punk that might recall an 80’s-era noise rock band like Ranaldo’s, A Shape puts their own idiosyncratic spin on the genre through an impassioned appraisal of its’ methodology.
On “Furtive Spirals” the band pounds single guitar notes into blunt damaging shapes as Sasha Andrès fevered howl claws thru the noise. But, while the effect is to build a tightly wound tension, the four-piece proceeds to unspool it into galloping passages of headlong adventure. This back and forth between the terse and loose tempos continues until Pasquiet launches into a bright guitar run that sounds almost triumphant before returning to moodier passages of sonic speculation. Throughout, Andrès vocal presence is unsettling, to say the least, and though she charges the song with her angry lament, she also gives way to sections of dreamy and searching introspection.
Look for the limited edition vinyl for Inlands, issued in a run of 200, to come out on Jelodanti, while digital copies will be handled by Atypeek.
