Shape Worship - A City Remembrancer

Facts Front and Follow presents A City Remembrancer, the debut album from Shape Worship aka Ed Gillett. Gillett has been working under the Shape Worship name since 2011. His 2013 debut releases (the Observances EP on Exotic Pylon and the Throughways 7 on Gang of Ducks) weaved dense layers of foggy ambience and rich melodicism around rough-hewn, dancefloor-inspired rhythms. With A City Remembrancer, Gillett pushes his sound into bold new territories. Inspired by the shifting histories of London's physical spaces, the album is both a beautifully detailed piece of sound and a nuanced, politicized eulogy to the city and it's inhabitants. Field recordings and vocal samples paint a rich portrait of London as a gigantic palimpsest, constantly being rewritten or renewed; from the postwar utopianism of Brutalist architects, and the plight of residents now being evicted from those same monolithic estates, to ancient burial grounds dislodged by new Crossrail tunnels, or secrets being recovered from the mud of the Thames. Those voices emerge from a rich sonic backdrop: clouds of billowing synths and digital textures wrap around clarinets, pianos, and dulcimers, or are underpinned by fierce drum programming and oppressive bass weight; modular synthesizer experiments blur into minimal composition and pounding techno, the album's dense collage of sounds reflecting the disorientation, beauty, and verticality of the city itself.