If perception could fracture into rhythm, it might sound like Absurd Matter 2. The new album by Shapednoise, real name Nino Pedone, turns disorientation into architecture. Born after a Ménière’s diagnosis in 2022 that affected his hearing and balance, it becomes what he calls “a confrontation with the fragility of perception itself.”
“Sound stopped being merely external; it became physical, unstable, something that could betray or overwhelm me,” he tells METAL. “Absurd Matter 2 reflects that instability through distortion, sudden shifts, and collapsing frequencies, but also through control.” Across its ten tracks, distortion becomes emotion, a way of regaining control through the very act of losing it.
Collaboration here is not decorative but structural. As for the seven featured names on the release, Shapednoise says “They’re all artists who push sound and emotion right to the edge.” Adding, “Each brought a truth or tension that mirrored the instability and beauty of perception.” At the record’s centre, Repeater with Armand Hammer unravels through collapsing loops — what Shapednoise calls “a perception glitch.” Its video by Sevi Iko Dømochevsky captures the same pull between confusion, distortion and sensory overload. “I wanted people to experience that disorientation, but also to see how it could become expressive,” he says. “It’s about embracing instability as something that can reveal its own strange beauty.”
Across the record, Fatboi Sharif brings a raw, spiritual tone to Bandage Chipped Wings, ICECOLDBISHOP fuels Crash Landing with fierce momentum, and Moor Mother and Loraine James in I Saw the Light open up some moments of rare stillness nonetheless intermixed with industrial noise. Splintered with Slikback pushes that intensity to its limit, while Veil with Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith drifts into eerie melodic distortion before the final breath of Outro.
Fashion also becomes part of the disruptive language of the album. Shapednoise collaborated with Gerrit Jacob for a shoot in custom red and electric looks that extend the music’s emotion into fabric. “Gerrit instinctively understands how to translate my sounds into images and textures,” Pedone says. Together with visual artists Dømochevsky and Collin Fletcher, the album’s world turns post-human, where beauty and collapse share the same surface.
When asked what to expect live, Pedone calls it a full-body experience. “The live show places the audience inside the work rather than simply observing it,” he says. Light, movement and sound merge into one, echoing the album’s shifting sense of perception. Inside Absurd Matter 2, senses tremble. Disorientation turns deliberate and instability sharpens into control.
