Sorry Role Play: The Noise Behind the Mask

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One night in a nearly empty London pub, the Sorry couple found themselves talking to Adam Curtis. The documentary filmmaker, known for his theories on memory and the illusion of control, observes that the contemporary world simply performs itself: every gesture, every identity, is a form of role-playing. This observation stuck in the minds of Asha Lorenz and Louise O’Brien. Months later, in their north London studio, it became the spark for a record built around this concept: repetition, imitation, the confusion between what one is and what one represents.

Since debuting with “925” in 2020, Sorry has resisted the temptation to define itself. Their sound, somewhere between grunge, psychedelia and twisted pop, seems designed to escape any label. With 2022’s standout Anywhere Else , the team took a harrowing Polaroid of post-Brexit London.

under disguise

“Cosplay” slowly took shape in a small studio, with the pair recording alone and retaining the imperfections of the original portion of the track in the final version. The samples become narrative tools: a section of Guided By Voices returns as a distorted echo, and a reference to Tony Basil becomes a dark incantation. Everything is manipulated until it seems to be from another dimension. The idea is not nostalgia but transformation: wearing the past like a costume to understand what remains of the present.

This visual project, co-curated by Lorenz and director Flo Weber who goes by the pseudonym Flasha, expands the discussion beyond music. In the video, glimpses of place and everyday life are inverted into images of restless fluidity. The result is a coherent and unsettling world in which satire becomes anxiety-provoking and scenes transform into some form of truth.

the sound of escaping

“Echoes” opens, pretending to be a hallucinatory ballad, then breaks into a slight distortion. From there, the album proceeds like an obstacle course: “Waxwing” injects pop into a synthesized gothic milieu, “Jetplane” takes lo-fi sounds and pushes them into geometric joints, and “Life In This Body” pauses time with a childish, minimalist melody. On “Today Might Be the Hit,” the beat gets spasmodic, while “Love Posture” mixes R&B and mechanical noise. It all culminates in “Jive,” a powerful finale in which Lorenz’s voice repeats itself like a physical obsession rather than an emotional one.