Album Of The Week: Two Shell Two Shell

Mystery has kept a hold on many of history’s most lauded electronic musicians. Producers ranging from Burial to Aphex Twin to Vegyn have employed varying degrees of elusiveness to their advantage, cultivating hushed personas that stir rumors and generate theories among fans. More recently, in the style of a Zoomer-friendly Daft Punk, Two Shell have become internet favorites without anyone knowing their identities. The UK duo emerged on Peverelist’s no frills left-field label, Livity Sound, with the dubstep EP Access in 2019. After creating the imprint Mainframe Audio, Two Shell distanced themselves from the austerity of their avant-techno peers. They’ve embraced gleeful hooks, launched a cryptic website, sold $1,298 “boring rocks” on Bandcamp, and disguised themselves with cartoony costumes. These impish bits quickly led some of Two Shell’s influential forebears to take notice, and they began cropping up in mixes from Ben UFO, Jamie xx, and Four Tet.

Two Shell’s breakout coincided with a transformative time for me as a music lover, in the winter of 2022. Their mini EP, home, appeared on streaming services while I was living in a half-decorated apartment in East Hollywood; working a disheartening email job; slogging out a long-distance relationship; and gearing up for a daunting cross country move to New York City. I was too drained and discombobulated to put any significant energy into cracking the impenetrable Los Angeles warehouse scene. However, I located bursts of serotonin via artists in the vein of Overmono, DJ Python, and Jacques Greene, as I wandered litter strewn overpasses. I had spent college nights DJing Orange County parties and crafting hazy club EPs as a fleeting joke. This period of dance music infatuation was different, though — highly sincere, and borderline desperate. Spending many of my leisurely hours alone, churning out Resident Advisor reviews in the smog stained half-light of my living room, I began to realize that a good chunk of my adult life was going to be earnestly devoted to electronic music.

Few tracks catered to my quest for headphone euphoria better than Two Shell’s “home” and its B-side, “no reply.” The unbridled bangers center on wobbly synths, pristine breakbeats, and warbled vocal chops. I ran the cuts back on repeat in the wake of the EP’s January release, letting them fizz in my brain until they left a permanent etch on that unsteady era. Once my feet were firmly on the ground in Brooklyn that July, I finally immersed myself in a community of kindred DJs and writers. As I enjoyed several weeks of blissful escapism and willful semi-employment, it seemed that everyone around me was also having a Two Shell summer. Heads bragged about copping home on vinyl well before it surfaced online; they complained about an annoying stunt, in which body doubles stood in at beloved Queens space Nowadays while Two Shell livestreamed from London; they speculated about which prominent DJs might actually be hiding under the morph suits. As the first gusts of East Coast autumn wind blew through my hair, the collective “home” buzz rapidly wound down. The song is so sugary and addictive that, following several hundred spins within the span of six months, revisiting it became like trying to scarf a jumbo bag of Lifesavers the morning after Halloween.

The time since has found Two Shell strategically maintaining a lower profile, touring heavily, but inviting less conversation. In March of this year, the pair unveiled the FKA Twigs collaboration “Talk To Me.” They hinted at a larger return to the spotlight by granting MixMag a rare interview in July, nonsensically dishing to veteran electronic music journalist Philip Sherburne in a cockney tone over email. Early in October, Two Shell announced a deal with Young, along with details for their self-titled full-length debut.

From front to back, Two Shell quivers and glistens, calling to mind a patch of AI-generated liquid metal. “be gentle with me” presents a chintzy parody of EDM, opening with taut keyboard stabs that sputter beneath eerie singing. “[rock✧solid]” is swaggering and hip-hop-indebted, a distorted voice rapping atop a plasticky groove. “/inside//” evokes what might happen if Imogen Heap was forced to pander to the Electric Daisy Carnival demographic. “be somebody” finds a robot yearning for success over future bass swells and snare clacks that seem to rupture on a microscopic scale. Two Shell eventually explodes into digitized ash with the closer “Mirror,” which ends things with a cascade of steel drum twangs and giddy 2-step sequencing. It’s a cathartic cap to an album that all sounds like it could fracture as easily as a CD-ROM chucked directly onto concrete.

It works to Two Shell’s benefit that the long-awaited record is marginally more sincere than the project’s goofiest material, such as the aptly-titled single “Mum Is Calling.” It enables Two Shell to reconnect with an air of genuine edginess that had been starting to fade. “You can either be a leader or a follower. Start eating or get chewed. If you come out on the front foot the rights holder they will respek it. They’re probably, like, damn. These lads have got spunk and that’s how we felt when we wrote the damn lyrics,” Two Shell told Sherburne in the MixMag feature, when prodded about their brave decision to leave uncleared samples recognizable. Even as they indulge the mainstream with big-tent hyperpop, Two Shell’s fearlessness rings strong. Listening to the album makes me imagine reading a novel typed entirely in wingdings. The harder you squint, the less it makes sense. But hey, the squiggly characters are certainly mesmerizing on the page.

Two Shell is out 10/25 on Young.

Other albums of note out this week:
• Soccer Mommy’s Evergreen
• Laura Marling’s Patterns In Repeat
• 2nd Grade’s Scheduled Explosions
• Underworld’s Strawberry Hotel
• Megan Thee Stallion’s MEGAN: ACT II
• Fievel Is Glauque’s Rong Weicknes
• Amyl And The Sniffers’ Cartoon Darkness
• Onsloow’s Full Speed Anywhere Else
• Halsey’s The Great Impersonator
• Iceage frontman Elias Rønnenfelt’s solo debut Heavy Glory
• MUNA singer Katie Gavin’s solo debut What A Relief
• Mope Grooves’ posthumous Box Of Dark Roses
• Squint’s Big Hand
• Pixies’ The Night The Zombies Came
• Tears For Fears’ Songs For A Nervous Planet
• Pom Pom Squad’s Mirror Starts Moving Without Me
• Trauma Ray’s Chameleon
• Fashion Club’s A Love You Cannot Shake
• Hey, ily’s Hey, I Loathe You!
• St. Lenox’s Ten Modern American Work Songs
• Kelsea Ballerini’s Patterns
• Alvilda’s C’est Déjà L’heure
• Leikeli47’s Leikeli Ft. 47
• Tess Parks’ Pomegranate
• meija’s There’s Always Something
• MELTED BODIES’ The Inevitable Fork
• Courteeners’ Pink Cactus Café
• Andrea Bocelli’s Duets
• Caroline Shaw’s Leonardo da Vinci (Original Score)
• Fit For An Autopsy’s The Nothing That Is
• Chapel Hart’s Hartfelt Family Christmas
• Anya Marina’s Asteroid
• Razorlight’s Planet Nowhere
• Bastille’s &
• Gold Connections’ Fortune
• Better Lovers’ Highly Irresponsible
• Lone Justice’s Viva Lone Justice
• Bluey’s Bluey: Rug Island
• Stephen Becker’s Middle Child Syndrome
• Elke’s Divine Urge
• Miranda And The Beat’s Can’t Take It
• One True Pairing’s Endless Rain
• Cali Bellow’s Ciao Bella
• Overheard’s Intertwined
• Anna McClellan’s Electric Bouquet
• Paul Cauthen’s Black On Black
• Chuck Ragan’s Love And Lore
• Don Aaron Mixon’s The Welcome Mat
• Cardboard People’s Tigress Lane
• Sephine Llo’s Diamond Fall
• Effigies’ BURNED
• BUÑUEL’s Mansuetude
• Ruthven’s Rough & Ready
• Courtesy’s intimate yell
• Thunder Jackson’s Hello Stranger
• Street Nights’ The Long Goodbye
• Peach Pit’s Magpie
• Beth Hart’s You Still Got Me
• Devin Townsend’s PowerNerd
• Cephas Azariah’s Joy Paradox
• Little Moon’s Dear Divine
• Tangerine’s You’re Still The Only One
• Stavro’s You Turning World
• Félicia Atkinson’s Space As An Instrument
• Low Flying Hawks’ Makebelieve
• Rejjie Snow’s Peace 2 Da World
• Night Crickets’ How It Ends (?)
• Flock’s Flock II
• Ece Era’s Bedside Tunes
• Anthony Moore’s Home Of The Demo
• Living Gate’s Suffer As One
• instant crush’s I’M SORRY I DIDN’T BITE MY TONGUE
• JC Chasez’s Playing With Fire
• Ange Madame’s Ange Madame
• OOMASOOMA’s ENDLESS FUTURE
• EXUM’s hole
• One Morning Left’s Neon Inferno
• Jake And Abe’s Finally!
• Healing Force Project’s Nebula Dub Explorations
• Signal Hill’s Discarded Futures
• chokecherry’s Messy Star
• Spun Out’s Dream Noise
• Euros Childs’ Beehive Beach
• Black Curse’s Burning In Celestial Poison
• Sun Ra & His Arkestra’s Kingdom Of Discipline
• 311’s Full Bloom
• Joshua Thomas’ The Wings Outside
• Various Artists’ SUNSET BLVD: The Album Original Cast Recording
• Mabilene’s Storm Born
• Susanna Hoffs’ The Lost Record
• Mountain Time’s Dream Homes
• Ben Folds’ Christmas album Sleigher
• Khana Bierbood’s Monolam
• New Age Thief’s Stars Align
• Bent Blue’s So Much Seething
• Zaho de Sagazan’s La symphonie des éclairs (Le dernier des voyages)
• The Strike’s A Dream Through Open Eyes
• Liana Flores’ Flower of the soul (full bloom)
• Curses’ Another Heaven
• Kaktus Einarsson’s Lobster Coda
• Flock’s Flock II
• Theis Thaws’ Fifteen Days
• Flora Cash’s behind every beautiful thing
• Crown Shy’s Comfort Film
• robbietheused’s robbietheused
• Stone Horses’ Redemption Chronicles
• bôa’s Whiplash
• Hattie Webb’s Wild Medicine
• SI DIOS QUIERE’s No Angels
• Effigies’ BURNED
• Kit Orion’s Bottle Grin
• Cochise’s Why Always Me?
• HUNXHO’s THANK GOD
• The Orb’s Orboretum: The Orb Collection
• Green Day’s American Idiot 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
• Madi Diaz’s Weird Faith (Deluxe Edition)
• Machinedrum’s 3FOR82_D3LUX3
• Florence + The Machine & Jules Buckley And His Orchestra’s Symphony Of Lungs (BBC Proms At The Royal Albert Hall) live album
• Anne Wilson’s REBEL (Live From Lexington)
• Robert Stillman’s Something About Living live album
• They Might Be Giants’s Beast Of Horns live album
• Linda Ronstadt’s Live In Hollywood (Deluxe)
• Ladytron’s Time’s Arrow Remixed
• Bryan Ferry’s Retrospective: Selected Recordings 1973-2023
• Hans-Joachim Roedelius’s 90 box set
• Porno For Pyros’ greatest hits album Pyrotechnics
• Squarepusher’s Ultravisitor (20th Anniversary Deluxe Expanded Edition)
• Frank Sinatra’s L.A. Is My Lady 40th Anniversary Deluxe Edition
• Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s Live At The Fillmore East, 1969
• Queen’s Queen I box set
• Jason Mraz’s YES! (DELUXE EDITION)
• The Fall’s ‘Grotesque’ Live
• Grumpy’s Wolfed EP
• Kit Major’s Love.Sick.Major. EP
• fka.m4a’s Summer Nostalgia EP
• Pest Control’s Year Of The Pest EP
• Dazy’s IT’S ONLY A SECRET (If You Repeat It) EP
• GEMZ’s See The Future EP
• Gore.’s A Bud That Never Blooms EP
• Her New Knife’s chrome is lullaby EP
• Delaney Bailey’s Chiaroscuro EP
• Punitive Damage’s Hate Training EP
• Melani MacLaren’s Bloodlust EP
• Ben Quad’s Ephemera EP
• Wicca Phase Springs Eternal’s Midnight At The Castle Moorlands EP
• Allen Stone’s Mystery EP
• GRRL x Made Of Oak’s Hardcore EP
• She’s In Parties’ Puppet Show EP
• Slark Moan’s The Return Of Guitar Music EP
• S.C.A.B.’s Rose Colored Glasses EP
• Wand’s Help Desk / Goldfish EP & In A Capsule Underground
• Bruce Brubaker’s Eno Piano 2 mini album
• Alice Longyu Gao’s Assembling Symbols Into My Own Poetry mini album