living shape - bloom

Living Shape 

Bloom
self-released; 2013

3.5 out of 5

By Sean Dennison

The Zurich-based three-piece band, Living Shape, churn up gloom rock that leaves a sweetly bitter taste in your mouth.

Living Shape is more about crafting mood than noise. The guitar hooks dissipate over patient drumming while layers of distortion slowly and casually pile up beneath the track. There are some tribalistic elements over the course of five tracks on their EP Bloom, mainly the percussive repetition and the dusty notes, which guide the melodies like flares in the sky. 

The album opens with "Natural Spirit" which combines 1970's  guitar distortion, organic live sounding drums and a dynamic vocal performance. "Singing With Crows" uses lighter guitar notes that evolve into sharper riffs and then form into softer notes to ease the track into its ending.

"Almost" features a fantastic guitar solo that electrifies over the linear rhythm section, and "Nasty Girl" grabs the listener's attention immediately with a hook proclaiming the singer's love for his nasty girl, which is already ear catching, but the nuanced studio effects make the repeating claim intoxicating. "Bloom," the eponymous closer, though, which is the longest track on the EP, churns throughout its seven-and-a-half minute run. Brief lapses of comparable calm, serene guitar tugs and easy percussion occur in between the heavy melancholia.

Bloom is an impressive EP for the control the musicians demonstrate over their instruments. No tune is left unguided, and each song flows easily and happily through the murky mood that most of the tracks create. Tense moments are punctured by powerful musical swells neither jubilant nor overbearing, but simply existing as an example of the Teutonic tunes these Swiss can create.

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