Shapes Stars Make

In late 2007, friends Michael Gooden and Jon Cook decided to focus and change directions from previous musical attempts and formed Shapes Stars Make. "Shapes Stars Make sound exactly the way you would expect a band with this name to sound like. The music is airy with gentle flickers that light up small and large. The music consumes the listener like the lights in the night sky and lets you dream out loud." (AbsolutePunk)
Shapes Stars Make crafts emotionally-rich indie rock, heavy in post-rock influence. The band's songs are well-crafted harmonies that balance beautifully layered melodies and lyrics. In January 2008, Shapes Stars Make recorded their debut album with Producer/Engineer John Congleton (The Appleseed Cast, Explosions in the Sky, This Will Destroy You). The self-titled album was recorded and mixed during six rainy and cold days in Texas.
"Evident on the band's debut EP is a sound unique in its atypical condensation of genre techniques. Where as most indie bands experimenting with post-rock textures tend to develop around mellow, restrained build-ups and finishes, Shapes Stars Make represents six tracks equally gentle and melodic as they are massive in volume."(The Neo-Surrealist Movement)
In the Summer of 2008, Zach Edwards and SSM were united, after months of searching for a drummer. The result was an effortless blend of creativity, emotion, and technicality. Soon thereafter, the threesome began writing and arranging new material, assembling the pieces for their first full length album.
SSM signed with San Diego based label, Dreamt Music, in the fall of 2009 and went into the studio a short time later. The band, again, was afforded the opportunity to work with John Congleton on this endeavor. The debut full length from Dreamt, entitled 'These Mountains are Safe", was released on January 19, 2010.
"Dallas trio Shapes Stars Make follow up on the promise of their self-titled '08 EP with These Mountains Are Safe, an album of broadly cinematic Sigur-Ros-meets-Radiohead post rock and progressive, often ambient-textured, indie pop. This is music full of grand gestures and dramatic flourishes, richly produced (by John Congleton) and immaculately arranged but still grounded with grit and sweat. Shapes Stars Make are clearly a band with a overstuffed grab bag of big ideas, blessed with both technical ability and symbiotic interplay" (Direct Current)