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Throwing Shapes – Throwing Shapes (2025)
Review:
As naïve or as idealistic as the notion might seem to some amid the current circumstances and fractures in the world, there’s thankfully still no real telling what might happen when inspiration strikes. Each of us can, of course, navigate the world with the ready list of influences or factors in our head, primed to make cool conversations and good impressions; but at that critical moment when things become more than the sum of their collective parts, there’s nothing else for it, but to simply pursue that impulse. Such is the case of Irish experimental trio Throwing Shapes, a project initiated by jazzman, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Gareth Quinn-Redmond reaching out to percussionist Ross Chaney and harpist Méabh McKenna after a fit of longing for band-shaped activity. Throwing Shapes have quickly become something genuinely disarming, stripping back layers of sound and preconception with emphasis on the gentle revelations that are made in the act of play, and the lowering of defenses and vulnerability that attends. Recorded in Sonic Studios in Stoneybatter, an area at the heart of Dublin’s historic working-class north side, the band’s self-titled debut full-length shifts slowly and intentionally across its two sides. Quinn-Redmond’s cut-glass piano, accompanied by subtle sonic manipulations and incrementally ambitious synthesis sits neatly alongside Chaney’s mindful captaining of the kit, but creates magic when paired with the intrepid nature of McKenna’s Irish wire-strung harp and its idiosyncrasies, whether engaged in close conversation on leadoff single “Chosen Talk,” or in the slowed, tone-bent box-breaths of live centerpiece “Sonnoh.” The album’s pace is purposefully glacial, yet album midpoint “So and So” provides unexpected emotional engine of a front-to-back listen: sharp and playful exhalations of harp tradition emerging amid tonal and textural venture; single slowed and chopped notes; and the tangible hiss of environmental ambience. That same sense of fair game informs the nearly-subnautical atmospheres of album closer “Lo and Behold,” where parting strands of béalcheol and saxophone dance in and out of awareness as harp microtones reach their gentle crescendo atop cinematic synths. It’s trite to refer to the magic of creation as “lightning in a bottle,” or whatever other trope you’d care to mention, but it’s hard to argue that Throwing Shapes’s eponymous debut isn’t a document of something more than the collective care, effort, expertise and consideration of the people involved. Here’s hoping it puts the foundation under them to further plunge those depths. — daily.bandcamp.com
Track List:
01 - Calyx
02 - Meant to Say
03 - Sonnoh
04 - Chosen Talk
05 - So and So
06 - Clearly Faded
07 - Leave it Out
08 - Lo and Behold
Media Report:
Genre: ambient, electronic
Origin: Dublin, Ireland 
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.3.0 (UTC 2013-05-26)
Note: If you like the music, support the artist.
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