The four-piece, pooled of members of Qlowski, The Golden Dregs and Spirit Blue, mark out the autonomy of their new project across eight beautifully crafted songs.
Photo: Olivia Bryant | Words: Lloyd Bolton
Sculpture Park's debut album, 'Monument to Effort', is a collection to get lost in. Built originally around the solo project of Ted Mair, their repertoire was initially built around Mair's compositions. In their formation, originally as Sculpture, now Sculpture Park, the band expanded to something of an indie supergroup, pooling members who also play with Qlowski, Spirit Blue and The Golden Dregs (with whom Mair also plays keys). Now, on 'Monument to Effort', we feel in full force the coalescence of the group's ideas to form a unique and expansive sound, generally built out of atmospheric, sustain-heavy keys, loose rhythms and refrain-heavy lyrics, which gradually modulate to produce emotional nuance.
The title track, 'Monument to Effort', was released as a single, and this first taste of the record set the tone for an album that excitingly evolves from the group's debut EP 'Lichtenburg Figure'. Amid chant-like repetitions over stirring piano chords, certain jagged edges cut through, particularly in the crunching rhythm guitar, establishing an interesting juxtaposition. On this track and across most of the album, drums from Matt Merriman guide the listener through, picking out the shape of the structure and embellishing it. The collection is full of intriguing disquieting elements, which ripple the surface and keep things unpredictable, standout details including the slightly Sowetan drum beat under 'A Way' and the skittish saxophone and the spontaneous licks of guitar and piano on 'notwhatineed'.
'Old Dog' is our highlight of the record, a folky vocal melody playing off against a guitar riff, which lands somewhere between post-rock restraint and post-punk energy, before the song plateaus on the recurrent image of an "old dog's howl" echoing through a wood. Concisely kept to eight songs over thirty minutes, 'Monument To Effort' marks out Sculpture Park as one of most original and quietly innovative new bands in London at the moment. The album brims with ideas unexpectedly contrasted against each other, displaying that alchemical collective inspiration that all bands hope to find.
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