Shield Patterns - Contour Lines

Contour Lines envelopes the listener in its vast soundcraft and bestial textures, utilising Brentnall’s vocals first and foremost as an instrumental aesthetic rather than the vessel of a lyrical narrative. Awash with cavernous echo, they entreat the sonorous piano notes of opener “Shade” to reveal themselves from within the depths of Knox’s sonic spatiality. “The Rule”, available on YouTube with molecular constellation visuals, erupts from its spine-chilling cinematic fathoms with broad growls and a skittering trip-hop drumbeat that even finds time to indulge in a brief, fizzling 8-bit breakdown. Closer “Charon”, with its shrieking, discordant woodwind chorus, is wracked with the kind of restive bestiality only found in Hieronymus Bosch triptychs. Even the melodies, when they crest the waves of velvety malevolence, sound eerie; “Ghost Words” is like an unsettling inversion of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Forbidden Colours”. The record’s production is a blessing and a burden, impressive but prone to subsuming all its constituent parts into a cool, impenetrable density.

It would be wrong to deny that the sweeping Stygian arrangements of Contour Lines are indeed a triumph of the aesthetic over the poetic, but Brentnall’s songwriting does find some space to revel in its own dark sciences. Her voice glides over “Carve the Dirt” to deliver the refrain “The devil is in the detail/if you wait for it”, and “Ruby Red” laments: “When we begin to fly away on the wind/you’ll never know I needed you/more than I’d ever admit”. She tries her best to bestow a smouldering Gothic romance upon even the most goth of lines: “The pain of detachment suits us very well” accompanies the cold aquatic chimes of “Dead Air”. Elsewhere, the whispered digressions of “WeYouMe” pass by in ignominy. When parsed from their customary echo treatment and the imposing beats that swirl around them, large parts of the lyrical narrative just don’t pass muster.

Where Contour Lines falls down is in its reluctance to stray from the dark side and dispel the thick fog of malevolent minimalism. When it’s not pasting on the atmospherics with a digital trowel, the record produces some understated gems. Single “Dust Hung Heavy” makes use of a throbbing metallic undercurrent and whirring beats that sound positively sparse compared to some other songs here, just about subordinating itself to a welcome clarity in Brentnall’s lilting verses; “Ruby Red” is bare enough to throw into focus the fragility of its shivering strings and inflected piano tracks. Having abated all its apocalyptic baying and bellowing, “Charon” falls away and brings to light some pockets of unadorned vocal harmonies and disarmingly warm, gentle orchestration. Acknowledging he starkness of this duality, and better exploring its potential, may prove a rewarding step for the young Mancunian pair.