SHAKING HAND - Shaking Hand

Manchester's story has always been a peculiar one: every time it seems to have run out of words, it finds new ones to get the energy flowing again. The music born within those boundaries is a perfect mirror of the cultural and even urban evolution of that landscape: layers, deviations, new geometries built over old rubble. In today's UK, the jolt arrives when places like this get their hands dirty with invention once again.

Shaking Hand make their entrance right within these images, with a self-titled debut that feels like the present tense caught in the act. It only takes a few bars to get pulled into their sound: a bass that hooks you in, chiaroscuro guitar lines, a cold but reassuring light settling over the surfaces.

The trio (George Hunter on vocals/guitar, Freddie Hunter on drums, Ellis Hodgkiss on bass) crosses 90s alt-rock, post-rock and math rock, placing intricate guitar architectures at the center of the stage and reinforcing them with interweaving lines and friction. The coordinates are recognizable (Slint/Pavement as nerve endings, Yo La Tengo/Women/Ulrika Spacek as geometry, the contemporary tension of BCNR, the shadow of American Football, the oblique visions of California's Sholi), yet the record never sounds like a mere summary, steering these unmistakable relationships into a decidedly personal language, polishing it all off with a lean, muscular seventies rigor, and channeling its endless shifts into hard-progressive impulses.

David Pye's production at Leeds' Nave Studios (a converted church) heightens the record's physicality, lending it a breadth that pairs perfectly with the dense undercurrent of sound. The rhythmic movement feels credible and, above all, reproducible; the live session at Manchester's Low Four Studio, easily found online, confirms as much in a single take.

The frontman's vocals stay intimate, sunk deep in the mix: soft lines and harmonies that hold the instruments together; lyrics that read like notes, their meaning not built to be immediately absorbed.

Even from the single "Over The Coals" (June 2025), left off the tracklist, the direction taken by the Manchester trio was already clear: layers and shifts built on a post-industrial imagery tied to Brunswick Mill, a 19th-century former cotton mill now being converted into housing, with that slogan ("…Life's Not Linear…") standing as a statement of method.

The album consists of seven tracks, for a total running time of about 42 minutes, a fairly generous average per song, which says a lot about the message the band is putting across.

"Sundance" opens the doors with melodic clarity and shifting mechanisms; "Night Owl" is the tight, sudden jolt, almost a nervy pop song; "In For A… Pound!" gives off a sharper-edged verve, with bass acting as a handrail and drums that keep breaking and stitching the outline back together.

The record proceeds through metamorphosis: riffs placed in rotation, emptied out and reassembled, weights that shift on foundations that only moments before had been holding them up. "Mantras" is the core: nearly seven minutes immersed in a vortex that unfolds through subtle variations, building a tension that rises and then suddenly evaporates, leaving behind that strange feeling of quiet unrest.

In the second half of the album, the tracks noticeably stretch out.

"Up The Ante(lope)" plants itself as yet another unshakeable pivot point: a gradual build powered by a tight rhythm, shifting geometries, odd time signatures, stops and restarts that hold complexity and immediacy together, with a sardonic optimism delivered through gritted teeth. "Italics" suspends and pares down the mood, with its angular, monochrome edge, while "Cable Ties" closes things out just like a set-closer at a live show: expansive, ever-shifting, built on waves and surges.

The cover artwork conveys the same artistic idea: unrealized 1970s urban planning projects for Los Angeles by architect Roy Kappe, a world that was imagined but ultimately remained just a hypothesis.

Shaking Hand's self-titled debut plays with its cards on the table: perhaps more referential than revolutionary, yet already able to fuse its influences into a thoroughly personal vision, built on dynamics and micro-variations, long stretches handled with real confidence, alongside a raw, credible production and a vocal approach that favors immersion over emphasis.

The clear impression is that this is only the (juicy) beginning, and that the next step for this intriguing, very young prospect out of Albion's land could bring further surprises.

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04/02/2026