Sorry Cosplay: the noise behind the mask
The London band turns the confusion of the present into an art form in a third record that seeks not coherence, but a way to survive the disorder
One evening in London, in an almost deserted bar, the Sorrys find themselves talking to Adam Curtis. The documentary filmmaker, known for his theories on memory and the illusion of control, observes that the contemporary world is merely acting itself: every gesture, every identity, is a form of cosplay. The observation remains in the minds of Asha Lorenz and Louis O'Bryen. Months later, locked in their North London studio, it becomes the spark for a record that revolves around that very concept: repetition, imitation, the confusion between what one is and what one represents.
Since appearing on the scene with '925' in 2020, Sorry have always worked against the temptation to define themselves. Their sound - somewhere between grunge, trip-hop and warped pop - seems designed to escape any label. With 2022's excellent 'Anywhere But Here', the band took distressing polaroids of a post-Brexit London.
Under disguise
"Cosplay" takes shape slowly, in a tiny studio where the duo record alone and preserve the imperfect tracks from the first sessions in the final versions. Samples become narrative tools: a Guided By Voices fragment returns as a distorted echo, a reference to Toni Basil turns into a sombre mantra. Everything is manipulated until it seems to come from another dimension. The idea is not nostalgia, but reworking: wearing the past as a costume to understand what remains of the present.
The visual project, curated by Lorenz together with director Flo Webb under the pseudonym Flasha, extends the discourse beyond music. In the videos, everyday places and views are turned upside down into images in which disquiet flows. The result is a coherent and disturbing world, where irony becomes anxiogenic and staging becomes a form of truth.
The sound that escapes
It opens with 'Echoes', which pretends to be a hallucinated ballad before shattering into bland distortions. From there, the album proceeds like an obstacle course: "Waxwing" pours pop into a synthetic gothic setting, "Jetplane" plays with the sound of lo-fi and pushes it into geometric jams, "Life In This Body" suspends time in a childlike, minimal melody. In "Today Might Be the Hit" the rhythm becomes convulsive, while "Love Posture" mixes R&B and mechanical noise. It all culminates in "Jive", a pounding finale in which Lorenz's voice repeats like a physical rather than emotional obsession.
