Twin – Hverir EP

Freq — Sat, 04 Jun 2016 09:40:35 +0000

This is a truly haunting experience; think Mazzy Star with a whisper of Shelleyan Orphan or Alison Shaw from Cranes, but softer, swollen in the ambiguous. Its language a diffusion of hues, suggestions for your mind to play with, backed by switchblades of horizon that pull at the frame, inverting the scenery in cycling hooks of guitar, droning key-lines, tumbling percussives.

A strange inviting atmosphere that holds true for the EP’s opener (and Bumtapes single) “Messiah”. Eleven minutes that literally take your breath away on a sanctum of spiralling guitar and thermal weaves of vocal. A stream of consciousness that opens out in climbing secondaries and beating aortas, the pace suddenly cut back on a “Sugar Hiccup” of Cocteau Twin parallels and swooning multiples. This is powerful stuff into which “Viola Sororia” folds some darker hues. An experimental verve whose shimmering heart solicits a siren call from beyond, churning in tape forwards, Fursaxa-like vibes milking the fiery orche and vivid turquoise sinkholes of this EP’s Icelandic namesake.

Delicate vocals that float like diaphanous threads round the instrumentation, shimmer in unison with the eastern tapers of guitar on “Traum” and “Moving Light”‘s slow transits dancing the divine in psychedelic washes and wind-caught chimes. The focus dragging you deeper into the folding expanse of “The Sheltering Sky”, leading seamlessly to the entirely vocal-less closer “Astoria” with its ascending glides of guitar sycamore scarred in a heavy riffage and funnelling dualities. Stoking up a host of heady dramatics before leaving you like a lucid dream, slipping definition in the morning light and escaping across your skin in a trail of goose bumps.

A beautiful artefact indeed.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-

Chicaloyoh / Terrine / Twin (live at Café Kino)

Freq — Wed, 26 Aug 2015 21:36:21 +0000

Bristol
21 August 2015

Loved the way Twin‘s guitars seemed to shimmer in your mind’s eye like a hazy mirage. A spectre of voice weaving through as lush loops were overlaid in trebling ascents. Endlessly changing, channelling, dusted in a candle-lit intimacy of curling chords caught in a Fursaxa-like beguile. A sound that climbed into scythed skylines and collapsed in radiating waves. A delicate and dreamy apparition that exploded in applause.

https://soundcloud.com/twin-music-2/asteria

Next were angular tantrums of guitar and screaming vox, noisy post-punk shenanigans under the moniker of Terrine (aka Claire Gapenne) to a backing of fucked-up sparks and trashed percussions. She was a box of total surprises that just kept giving fractured with awesome curves of guitar’n’wailing pedals. A blissful, bruising squeezing in an altogether mellower diversion, a surprise brassware addition that gave me TG Fanni Tutti shivers smeared in kettling drumscapes before wasping back to more noisy enthusiasms . Interested parties should throw their attentions to her bandcamp or venture further afield with the related no-wave(((isms))) of the Cousteau Twins.

Mes seins plutôt que français by TERRINE

The lights were lowered for the last act, a witchy concoction called Chicaloyoh. Her equipment perched on a red velveteen shroud, below which a shrine of deities were pin-picked in tea lights. Her Nico(esque) dronals seemed to pierce the gloom beautifully, pinned to skuttering beats that reminded me of Danielle Dax in places, as those loose rhythmic folds hungrily ate into the ritualised delivery.

LES SEPT SALONS by Chicaloyoh

Curling vocals seemed to haunt the battlements of each song like a screech-less Diamanda Galás. Fallen angels of French baptised in lush keyboards that wavered between pop, psych and something altogether more unquantifiable.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-

Twin – Freq (under ongoing maintenance)

Twin – Hverir EP

Chicaloyoh / Terrine / Twin (live at Café Kino)