Even though Sorry released their brilliant debut album 925 last year, the group—its core members Asha Lorenz and Louis O’Bryen—has been prolific for a few years now, releasing mixtapes since 2017. A few weeks ago, they shared two new singles with accompanying videos, their first new releases since their official debut. Joined by drummer Lincoln Barrett, multi-instrumentalist Campbell Baum, and new member Marco Pini on electronics, today, we’ve learned that those tracks, “Separate” and “Cigarette Packet,” are a part of a surprise EP called Twixtustwain.
In a press statement, Sorry said of the EP that the “shapes and forms are more odd and misshaped to fit around the mantra type lyrical lines. They are smaller ideas that we wanted to explore and put out between albums to follow from the Home Demo/ns mixtapes. Then we’ve wanted Home Demo/ns up for a while too, so more people can enjoy them now. They also show the songs/ideas that developed into 925.”
The five-track project finds the band experimenting with bludgeoning electronic sounds. The opening “Don’t Be Scared” has skittering chirps and bleeps that I imagine an animatronic pigeon might make. O’Bryen’s vocals are weary and wilted as he coos, “Don’t be scared / You are lying next to me,” during the chorus. Lorenz’s voice struts into frame, at one point quipping, “So many questions, even more doubts / Hopelessly devoted to the boat going out.” It takes a hypnotic turn mid-song as a flurry of distortion and screeching synths claw their way into a funky melody fit for a trippy horror flick.
Closer “Favorite,” which dances around notions of desire, pondering what it means to mean something to someone, is probably most resembles 925‘s melancholic rock. But each track on Twixtustwain contains an enigmatic melody, riff, or unearthly sound. The deadpan or dazed delivery of Lorenz and O’Bryen’s vocals only add to each song’s eeriness. Once more, the group continues to craft inventive songs without repeating themselves.
“We try and make the videos in a playful way whilst also expressing lots of mood and emotion; the use of black space and never showing full faces or using objects (like the toy cars) makes it feel like they’re flashes of thought or surreal memories,” they said in the past when discussing the videos for “Separate” and “Cigarette Packet.” The former was based loosely on the J. G. Ballard novel Crash. “It’s as if the water is his mind and he’s relaying or planning the series of crashes with the toy cars. Most of all, the videos are used for the colour splash or the movement to give the song almost another layer of rhythm that’s maybe audibly invisible but you visually can feel it within the song.”
Watch all the visuals below—and hear their original mixtapes, now available on streaming, here.
