Weird Shapes

One of those tracks that just washes over you, this is an atmospheric, reverb laden joy. It’s slow pace, minimalist arrangement and electronic touches come together to form a smooth whole, almost trance like in its execution. - Risk & Consequence

CLOSE TO THE EDGE
WEIRD SHAPES "LIGHT / BLUE SKY AT NIGHT" (AMAZON / i-TUNES)
RELEASED? 31st October.
SOUNDS LIKE? Dreamy, post-Beatle nastiness of epic proportions. Unspeakably excellent, dangerously cute and stupidly sharp and that's just the half of it, the half called 'Light'. The other half, 'Blue Sky At Night', goes all stripped back prog-rock as Yes batter R.E.M in a deserted cinema.
IS IT ANY GOOD? Fuck me, yes. Go find them, double licketty-split,the fires that burn brightest and all that. - Unpeeled.net

Blue Sky at Night by Weird Shapes is not what you expect it to be. From the start with it arpeggiated acoustic riff circling round that underpins the whole track sound like a set up to something that could easily descend into to saccharine-happy-indie-pop-from-the-mid-90's.

Instead it leads you to a more sparse and atmospheric place. The acoustic guitar still whirling the background only now you have a drum beat occasionally that reverberates and disappears into the ether. The vocals follow the same path with the opening cooing and lyrics that sound like someone isolated and wandering.

What is most surprising about the song is just how minimal it is and through this minimalism it becomes very haunting.

The track is very reminiscent of Wild Beasts in the falsetto vocals and of former Beta Band frontman Steve Mason through the use of atmospheric dustup style beats mixed with acoustic music.

Whilst it doubtful this will crossover to find a mainstream audience but this definitely find an audience within the indie crowd. The haunting, beautiful melody and music is the perfect soundtrack to listening to at night pondering. - AAA Music

It would be far too easy (and perhaps a little inaccurate) to describe the above band with their eponymous adjective. Personality-wise, they do embody said adjective with such zest they make Bjork seem merely ‘kooky’, but this is not to say their music is the sort that makes you want to lock yourself away from society with nothing but a mug of hot chocolate and a James Morrison CD to recover from the brain-bashing. There are ‘songs’, rather than just ‘sounds’. They have melodies, rather than a random assortment of pitches. Their debut single, double-A side “Blue Sky At Night”/”Weird Shapes Light” is an interesting thing.

Ok, so “Blue Sky At Night” does sound a little like a Bombay Bicycle Club backing track that they couldn’t be bothered adding a proper vocal to so they got the guy from Maximo Park to make up some sparse, shoe-gazey thing to go on top of it. But to be fair, for what it is, Weird Shapes make a pretty good job of it. The incessant plucky guitar theme twangs away hypnotically, and their use of percussion is well considered. So you won’t hear it being covered on X Factor, or at 3am as you stumble out a nightclub. They’d probably be outraged if you did. The idea seems to be more about changing how people think about music, or at least giving an intriguing sonic experience. There’s definitely some of the latter – after a few listens there is a comforting familiarity about the track and there is much to like – but there is nothing about it that makes me say I’ll still be listening to it in a month.

“Weird Shapes Light” is a fairly different prospect. More of an obvious single, it is comparatively purposeful, and – dare I say it – accessible. In places it even invokes the image of a suddenly experimental Elbow. Though still a little obscure in places, it is lyrically much richer. “This is for the little man who’s confused”, it begins, and though the obviousness (totally a word) quickly dissipates, it all seems much less ‘out-there’. Upon closer inspection, it’s clear that this is no throwaway track – a lot of effort has gone into achieving this sound. Much of the credit for this could perhaps go to producer Graeme Stewart, who has also worked with Radiohead (I know, right).

For a band that has existed less than a year, Weird Shapes already sound like a band well established. Their confidence in their own sound, well-deserved, should see them do well. - Aberdeen Student Radio Blog

It would be far too easy (and perhaps a little inaccurate) to describe the above band with their eponymous adjective. Personality-wise, they do embody said adjective with such zest they make Bjork seem merely ‘kooky’, but this is not to say their music is the sort that makes you want to lock yourself away from society with nothing but a mug of hot chocolate and a James Morrison CD to recover from the brain-bashing. There are ‘songs’, rather than just ‘sounds’. They have melodies, rather than a random assortment of pitches. Their debut single, double-A side “Blue Sky At Night”/”Weird Shapes Light” is an interesting thing.

Ok, so “Blue Sky At Night” does sound a little like a Bombay Bicycle Club backing track that they couldn’t be bothered adding a proper vocal to so they got the guy from Maximo Park to make up some sparse, shoe-gazey thing to go on top of it. But to be fair, for what it is, Weird Shapes make a pretty good job of it. The incessant plucky guitar theme twangs away hypnotically, and their use of percussion is well considered. So you won’t hear it being covered on X Factor, or at 3am as you stumble out a nightclub. They’d probably be outraged if you did. The idea seems to be more about changing how people think about music, or at least giving an intriguing sonic experience. There’s definitely some of the latter – after a few listens there is a comforting familiarity about the track and there is much to like – but there is nothing about it that makes me say I’ll still be listening to it in a month.

“Weird Shapes Light” is a fairly different prospect. More of an obvious single, it is comparatively purposeful, and – dare I say it – accessible. In places it even invokes the image of a suddenly experimental Elbow. Though still a little obscure in places, it is lyrically much richer. “This is for the little man who’s confused”, it begins, and though the obviousness (totally a word) quickly dissipates, it all seems much less ‘out-there’. Upon closer inspection, it’s clear that this is no throwaway track – a lot of effort has gone into achieving this sound. Much of the credit for this could perhaps go to producer Graeme Stewart, who has also worked with Radiohead (I know, right).

For a band that has existed less than a year, Weird Shapes already sound like a band well established. Their confidence in their own sound, well-deserved, should see them do well. - Aberdeen Student Radio Blog

Weird Shapes & The Prison Library, free show, alive@28, Newcastle, Friday

“Contrary to popular belief, music is a state of mind, in which bears can roam freely, uninhibited by the French or the idea that red men can work equally in a sub zero climate society”. That may not be the answer many would anticipate when a band is asked to describe their sound, but then the haunting and whimsical world of Weird Shapes isn’t your typical one.

Hell no. Performing a mutated hybrid of pattern guitars, soft synth and tear jerkingly beautiful vocal arrangements, Teesside’s favourite new sons will, in the eyes of BBC 6 Music’s Tom Robinson, take you to another place.

Produced by Radiohead co-conspirator Graeme Stewart, the group will release their debut double A single Light / Blue Sky at night on October 31st and will perform in Newcastle for the very first time this weekend before buggering off on an expected national tour in the New Year. Newcastle’s alternative and darkly charming sextet The Prison Library will also perform on Friday along with kooky multi instrumental Acrobatic Society and psych experimentalists The Watchers.

Doors will pop open to the masses this Friday at No.28 (The Old Red Rooms) from 9pm and the party will dance and sway until 3am. Oh, and it’s free. - Kyeo.tv

Sometimes the name of a band can say a lot about it, as Weird Shapes can easily exemplify. Already spotted by BBC 6 and featured on the Sentric Music Podcast, Weird Shapes will be playing live during the tail-end of 2011, after the release of the debut single ‘Light/Blue Sky at Night’.
This English quintet shaped its own sound, blending in some oriental influenced tunes, conventional guitar/percussions, keyboard and dreamy voices. Everything is uniformly blended, especially the voices, which as echoes are mixed with synths and guitars, with some drums in the background to shape the rhythm. The voice itself is nothing more than echoes and choirs, creating an ambient/post- resemblance, which cannot be placed in a particular genre. - Electra Morrison

Wind the clocks back a year and Teesside based alt-rockers WEIRD SHAPES were touring the toilet circuit playing their brand of lad, swag rock singing about scuffles with the fuzz, drinking cider and growing up in the industrial labrynth of the North-East under the moniker DIRTY WEEKEND .

But today, things are different. “DW was about my angry young man syndrome” reflects Daniel Spooner, the groups vocalist and bass player: “and whilst I’m hardly old at 28, it was getting kind of hard to sing about brushes I had with the law as a teen when the most trouble I’ve been in over the past few years is a parking ticket”

Hesitating to use the word ‘matured’, a term thrashed around all too nonchalantly when a band changes its direction, Spooner and his troupe sat down and have crafted something totally out of left-field. What we have here is something truly magnificent, ambitious, interesting, provoking and down-right fucking mind blowing

Musically, songs such as Blue Sky At Night seem to float majestically from out of the speakers and soar; imagine if Sigur Ros had a bite of a parmo and spent the afternoon listening to Wild Beasts then you are somewhere in the right ball-park. Spooners voice, whilst before focusing heavily on his broad Teesside accent, still posses the same archaic charm that made DW so accessible yet against the back-drop of Weird Shapes new sound, it manages to be so much more; It penetrates your soul almost with its power and its delicacy.

To shift direction so flawlessly is rarely achieved and often influences can clash resulting you end up with a mixed pot. However no such difficulty is evident with Weird Shapes as the boys all seem to singing from the same page and are finally in a place making music that their talent and potentially demands. - Cosmonaut

It’s not often that a piece of music completely blindsides me, but ‘Blue Sky At Night’, from Stockton-on-Tees based band, Weird Shapes, had precisely that effect on me. A delicate framework of discordant guitar hook underpins the angelic vocal of lead singer Daniel Spooner to haunting effect. Even more impressive is the accompanying video, beautifully shot on the cold emptiness of Redcar beach, and a perfect vehicle for the song’s powerful meditative qualities. ‘Weird Shapes Light, the other half of the double A side, contains further hints of this band’s serious potential. A strong and intriguing debut - more please. - Annular Media

It’s not often that a piece of music completely blindsides me, but ‘Blue Sky At Night’, from Stockton-on-Tees based band, Weird Shapes, had precisely that effect on me. A delicate framework of discordant guitar hook underpins the angelic vocal of lead singer Daniel Spooner to haunting effect. Even more impressive is the accompanying video, beautifully shot on the cold emptiness of Redcar beach, and a perfect vehicle for the song’s powerful meditative qualities. ‘Weird Shapes Light, the other half of the double A side, contains further hints of this band’s serious potential. A strong and intriguing debut - more please. - Annular Media