6 Things W/Outer Shapes

Photo credit: Merissa Blitz

Some bands whisper the darkest truths. New York’s Outer Shapes screams them. The duo is Laura Shkouratoff and C Santos. Their sound blends hip hop drums and loud guitars, opposing their vulnerable lyrics. Their live performances are anything but soft. Balaclavas, programmed lights, loops, and why not throw in a tuba?

Their latest release, FORWARD BACKWARD, sets a new marker for the band. They’ve always been brutally honest in their lyrics, but this is a new level. Setting the tracklist order, revealed the EP’s theme: relapse. Each song conveys a different feeling. From the itch (“Dust”) to the repetition (“Spin Cycle”), the overarching story is a familiar one. The pair succumbs to honesty, exposing a new layer of themselves. It’s the type of story arc where you unexpectedly arrive at a destination with your eyes closed, being led by a feeling rather than a map.

We connected with Outer Shapes on catharsis, Warped Tour, instrument swapping, creating sonic contrasts and more.

1/ETHOS

Our motto is FEEL ALL YOUR FEELINGS and it's something we stick hard to. Our goal is to create music about the feelings and headspaces we often try to avoid and provide a space where they can be understood. We want to lock eyes with our listeners on their worst days and let them know they're not alone. We want to be in the studio with that vibe, letting our songs be that creative release of pain.

2/MUSICAL UPBRINGING

Laura was pretty exclusively under her dad's rock influence as a younger kid, while C lived more in the pop and R&B realms. In middle school, Laura picked up the tuba and C taught herself the guitar– we love playing those two onstage together. We met in early high school and connected deeply through sharing music with each other through our teens, a lot of Warped Tour alt/emo vibes, surf rap (we lived in California), hip hop, and whatever else we burned onto CDs for each other. Music was always blasting in Laura's old minivan.

3/DIY

Being DIY gives us full control of our creation: Laura designing the cover art, merch, animations, and other visuals helps us tie our art completely together. We've been able to build up our living room into a studio, and having that intimacy only makes our work better. We don't have external pressure anywhere right now, so we can really create with abandon and tell the stories we need to share. We create easter eggs that no one catches, they're just for our own creative satisfaction. Our live set benefits from the DIY approach as well because we get to be creative in filling every moment of our shows with a different kind of intensity than what we have in the studio that’s still, at its core, just the two of us. We’re running between instruments with programmed lights, costumes, and more, creating this high vibration that feels like the necessary opposite of the secluded studio.

4/PERFECTIONISM

We're perfectionists to our core. We have had to force ourselves to start writing a new song every month, because we'd go off working on a single for months if we could. There's no such thing as a perfect song, and the knobs can be endlessly turned: there's an art to figuring out when you're as close to that sweet spot as we can be. We're working for hours on one layer, fiddling with effects, making sure that we can hit that sonic balance of bright and harsh, hollowing and pained. We're at a party and we turn to each other and talk about what to do with the vocoder for the song waiting at home for us. From a technical standpoint, we're working within the limits of our home studio, but have come to understand how much recording quality can be good enough, especially to the levels we're mixing and layering our sound.

5/VULNERABILITY

Our relationship with vulnerability has bled from the vocal realm and into the sonic landscape. Laura's always written these heart-wrenching, fiery lyrics, has always been set on that itch to tell a story, dissect the pain. There was a sonic lag though, so our older music dampens the blow of her words, sounds gentle and more welcoming. That contrast frustrated us, we wanted the emotions to pulse through the whole sound, inform every decision we make. In the past few years, we've really figured out how to do that, adding exploding, morphing drums and playing a lot with textures across the board. The softness at the core of the lyrics then has space to really exist in its purest form.

6/COMMUNITY

Community has become our lifeline as we push ourselves to keep creating and expanding. We live for the talks we have with fans after our shows, approaching us for the first time like we’re old friends and telling us stories of their own. That space is so special, and Laura's been drawing these “behind the song” storytelling comics that have helped cultivate that energy online, too. Storytelling is at the core of human connection. There's a subset of people who see what we're doing and are ready to help us get there, and we hold those people so close. We’ve made so many beautiful connections with others through the communities we span–—the queer community, the disability community, the DIY scene here in NYC, and more—but our music is for everyone who wants to feel it all.

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Listen to FORWARD BACKWARD on streaming services here. Follow Outer Shapes on Instagram. You can catch Outer Shapes live:

4/2 - Brooklyn, NY @ The Broadway
4/4 - Butler, NJ @ The Sanctuary

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