Whisper in my ear,
Tell me all your fears
What you’ve done
Solemn Shapes, the Charlotte-based duo of Melanie Foxfire and Scott Sunset, conjure darkwave as séance: equal parts industrial pulse, EBM tension, and electronic hypnosis. Since 2016, they’ve played nearly 300 shows across the U.S., warping goth nights, festivals, and support slots into fevered rituals. Their name, drawn from a Vincent Scully meditation on Brutalist architecture, suits their style: stark, functional, and steeped in shadow. Psychedelic synths hiss beneath distorted beats; vocals veer from cyborg croon to spectral shriek. Comparisons nod to Skinny Puppy, Chris & Cosey, early Ministry, and Book of Love…but Solemn Shapes build their own brutal beauty, brick by brick.
Now, Solemn Shapes release a chilling new video for the title track from their EP Calling, a darkly poignant addition to their body of work steeped in themes of transformation, loss, and the seductive power of the unknown.
Calling is a surreal visual and sonic invocation that draws us into the haunted borderlands of desire, regret, and the unholy contracts we make to chase what we want…or escape what we’ve lost. Their signature blend of complex synth soundscapes, with a surprising contrast between Melanie Foxfire’s deeper, brooding vocals and Scott Sunset’s falsetto vocoder vibrations soaring through conveys a visceral emotional weight. In their new official video, Solemn Shapes shape-shift once again into something primal, precise, and poetically doomed.
The video for Calling, co-directed by Scott Sunset and Melanie Foxfire, plays like a fever trapped in tape; a forgotten film looped too long, worn thin with memory and meaning. It channels Kenneth Anger, David Lynch and the surreal 1940s work of Maya Deren as two figures circle one another like lost satellites, close but never touching, as sterile corridors flash cold as clinic lights. The story coils backward, buckling under its own weight. That blood-colored trinket (an amulet or anchor) passes hand to hand, a relic of regret, too heavy to wear, too sacred to throw away. The imagery is raw with contradiction: neon washed pale by distance, film grain blooming like bruises. Foxfire, clad in red, is less a woman than a wound: seer, saint, and ghost. Sunset drifts behind her, or ahead of her, or nowhere near.
Watch the video for “Calling” below:
Calling, mastered by Rob Robinson (ohGr, Order of the Static Temple), is available from Distortion Productions. Listen to the single below and order the EP here.
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