A lot has changed since two shell first took the dance music scene by surprise two years ago with the buoyant, genre warping, metallic two-step of home. The breakout single arrived at the start of the post-pandemic club renaissance, and signalled a shift toward a harder, faster sound. home sounded quite unlike anything else – an amalgamation of the sort of left field club sounds that had been bubbling on the underground with the wave of rave nostalgia that had washed over the scene during lockdown.
Part of its appeal should also be credited to how elusive its creators appeared – little was known then about who two shell are, and somehow even less feels certain about them now. It’s this sort of anti-establishment allure that has maintained two shell as a sort of nice, even when collaborating with heavyweights like FKA Twigs or reissuing 2000’s megahits by the Sugababes.
With the release of their self-titled debut album, they continue this tradition of obstinate non-conformity, creating a dizzying, shape-shifting journey that subverts expectations at every turn. Where their early material bristled with the anarchic energy of a genre-blurring jungle revival, this full-length effort finds two shell exploring a more reflective, introspective side.
Beneath the frenzied, hyper-compressed production – all crunching rhythms, shattered melodies, and warped, almost robotic vocals – lies a current of genuine emotion. Tracks like be gentle with me and Stars.. find the elusive pair confronting vulnerability, their male-coded vocals achingly confessing hurt and a yearning for connection.
Yet as soon as you latch onto these moments of intimacy, two shell yank the rug out from under you. [rock✧solid] erupts in a tantrum of industrial grit and jungle chaos, while the glitchy Nintendocore of dreamcast unsettles with its sense of dislocation. It’s a restless, shape-shifting listen, one that feels like an endlessly mutating digital fever dream.
For two shell, the rules of the game have always been murky, the objectives blurred. Navigating the dance music landscape as electronic music’s most intriguing enigmas, these masters of obfuscation have carved out a singular sonic territory, one where genres bleed into each other with reckless abandon and the line between sincerity and satire is perpetually obscured. While it may lack the convention exploding attack of their early work, this debut is a testament to their refusal to be pinned down or preceived as anything at all – visionaries included.
