The growth of sorryshape
Only a few can say that they have known sorryshape since the very beginning. A lone wanderer seeking to carve her own path over the course of a few years, her craft took years to truly perfect, and even still, the world hasn’t been shown her fullest potential.
A “pink lad” at FORM, Eve has long been embedded in the music community, helping to create the compilation series All Nighter, which has helped shine a new light on several rising artists like torr, To Oscar, wishlane, and so many others.
Her debut single Fault Lines is a clear culmination of the steps she had to take to get to this point, and it really is a rewarding listen.
Welcome to Azura Mitsuda. I have the pleasure to sit down with the symbol of hope, sorryshape.
Introduce yourself.
Hey, I’m Eve. I’m a 23 year old multimedia artist from Seattle, WA. I’m nonbinary and use she/fae pronouns.
How would you describe yourself as a person?
To be completely honest, I’m not sure. I feel like I’ve changed so much so often in the last five years that self-perception seems nearly unattainable. Right now, I’m a part time artist with a full time day job. I think I’m fairly unremarkable and reserved on a surface level, but there’s always something I’m stuck in my head about. There’s a lot that people don’t know about me, and I kind of like being able to express how I’m feeling or who I am through my work, be that music, film, games, or whatever else I get up to. I have a hard time sticking with any particular project or craft, so I’ve taken to calling myself “consistently inconsistent”.
How would you describe your musical process?
I used to just make music and release it without thinking too much about it. I really enjoyed every step of the process back then, but looking back now I feel that I wasn’t ever really creating my best work. Lately I’ve been pushing myself to make music that’s true to my own taste, pulling from an eclectic palette of genres and styles; trying to make something that’s my own. Lately I’ve struggled a lot with perfectionism, and there’s a lot of half-finished music that got left on the cutting room floor on the way to Fault Lines and the future of “sorryshape”. Inspiration isn’t something that you can cultivate very easily, so I’ve been trying to practice healthy artistic habits that encourage those inspirational bolts to strike. Listening to new music, trying to find new sounds that excite me, and writing down the lyrics that pop into my head when I’m showering. It’s a lot of bits and pieces that eventually culminate into a complete song. Fault Lines was actually the exception to the rule, being a song that I wrote a draft for in one night. Although doing the song justice through production and arrangement proved to be more challenging than I expected. I finally got to the point where the changes I was making weren’t necessarily making the song better, and I knew I had to let it go before I ruined it by overthinking every detail even more.
I’ve read Fault Lines as a song about struggling to find your footing, when no one seems to notice your personal battle. What inspired the decision to make this your debut release?
It’s the first song in a very long time that I’ve managed to finish in a state that felt worthy of releasing. I really just needed to get it out there to see if any of this hard work was resonating with others. It sometimes seemed pointless to continue toiling away at my work unless it was making an impact. I’ve seriously considered quitting music at least a dozen times since 2016, so being stuck in place questioning my every decision on my own was really not healthy. Fault Lines is about a lot of things, but it has an overarching theme of struggling with identity, motivation, and self-esteem. I drew parallels between a previous era of my life and where I am now, and the cycles that my emotions have. After seeing how Fault Lines was received, I feel a lot more optimistic about how people will respond to the rest of the music I’m currently working on. The date I released it has personal significance to me — everything kind of aligned just right and it felt like the time had come to reintroduce myself after being in hibernation for so long.
And how do you allow yourself to become vulnerable when it comes to your work?
There’s a layer of separation that makes me more comfortable expressing how I feel through my work. I’m not directly expressing my entire experience to everyone in my day to day life. Being able to weave my truth through metaphors and multiple (correct) interpretations makes my work personally cathartic but vague enough that I can keep intimate details more private. It also lets people interpret my message through their own lens, which is something I find myself doing with a lot of my favorite music. We’re pattern-seeking creatures, so finding a way to assign meaning to art using our own life experiences strengthens our understanding of art and ourselves.
What is the most difficult challenge you have faced in life, and how have you overcome it?
I’ve struggled with my mental health for as long as I can remember, and while I can’t say that I’ve overcome mental illness, I’ve learned to maintain control of myself through the turbulence. Without going into exhausting detail, there’s a lot that I struggle with that I’ve mostly kept to myself. Having an outlet that I’m not afraid to use to express my feelings has been very helpful for self-reflection. It will be a lifelong battle, but I’m learning how to avoid the pitfalls I used to be more oblivious to. I’ve had to learn how to take care of myself without feeling guilty for it, and that’s been much harder than it sounds.
When I first met you, you recently phased out your previous music project, nocollide. After this, you kept sorryshape a secret from the general public for nearly a year. What was it like hiding sorryshape from the world for so long?
It was really hard to keep my mouth shut, but I knew I wanted to surprise everyone with a new direction. It just took way, way longer than I anticipated to be satisfied with what I was creating. I knew that I had all of the time in the world to get it right, but I still feared that people would forget about me after being on hiatus for so long. A lot of people who found me online through FORM didn’t even know that I made music until I revealed Fault Lines. The music sphere on social media moves at the speed of light, and I felt compelled to keep up with that speed, but in the end it was completely unsustainable for me. I’m now taking the opposite approach and releasing what feels right when it feels right to do so. I’m not going to mold my vision to fit an algorithm. I want every piece of my discography moving forward to feel complete and meaningful.
You’ve definitely come a long way since nocollide. Where do you plan to go next?
I already have a few projects in the works, but everything is subject to change. I’m sitting on about a double LP of work, but it’s not clear to me what will and won’t get the chopping block yet. I’m taking my time to make sure that whatever I put out is work that I’m very proud of. Expect more from “sorryshape” in the first half of 2022. I’m really excited to show what I’ve been refining soon.
What would you say to someone starting out in music production or songwriting?
Your music is unique because you are making it. Don’t worry about creating something that hasn’t been done before. Don’t worry if others will like it. We’re our own worst critics. If you like your own work, chances are others will love it. Don’t overthink it, just make it. You don’t have to stick to a genre or a style; do whatever you want. Put your health above your output. It’s important to take care of yourself. It’s nearly impossible to make a career in music; do not write music for the wrong reasons. Create something you’d want to be remembered by, and don’t give up even when you want to over and over again.
Listen to Fault Lines, sorryshape’s debut single, on streaming services everywhere.
