Two Shell, a buzzy London duo who make hyperactive but melancholy bass music, are well-known for giving individuals the runaround. They preserve themselves nameless, and carry out with scarves and sun shades hiding their faces. Followers are despatched on digital breadcrumb trails by way of mysterious web sites and social media posts. Their first interview, with the Face, was performed in a chatroom of their very own design, and scrubbed from the web shortly after publication. Their second, with Mixmag, was completed over electronic mail and paired with images of a duo who followers on Reddit are nearly sure are usually not really Two Shell.
So I’m excited and cautious after I arrive at their Deptford studio to speak with them about their self-titled debut album, launched final week on the big-budget indie label Younger. Two Shell’s music mashes collectively varied sorts of dance music from the previous few many years – pace storage, techno, hyperpop, home, dubstep – and runs all of it by way of a cartoon filter, making for a sound that’s quick and dizzyingly heightened. Their studio is full of summary work and items of outlandish raver gear. Two tables are coated with dozens of hats, every embellished with embroidery and scraps of cloth. Two younger ladies are sitting on a fuzzy inexperienced sofa, carrying outfits that sit someplace between avant garde clubber and first-year artwork scholar: they introduce themselves as Flat Earther and Ghost Shrimp.
“So, that is the interview,” I say. Ghost Shrimp cheerily replies: “OK!” I realise I haven’t phrased it proper. “So, that is the interview?” The ladies reply, with an enormous quantity of pep: “Sure!”
In addition to their earlier interview antics, the duo supposedly despatched decoys to carry out at their debut Boiler Room DJ set, and as soon as carried out 4 exhibits concurrently at 4 completely different venues throughout London – although followers had labored out which present the “actual” Two Shell can be at. They’ve performed high-profile units at Coachella and Glastonbury, presumably as themselves – though once more, who is aware of?
I ask Two Shell about their origins. They first turned pals, Earther says, after Shrimp broke each her ankles, and the previous needed to wheel the latter round to their college lectures on an outdated workplace chair. They every communicate with the blissed-out, barely befuddled cadence of somebody who’s simply taken a huge hit on a gravity bong, and punctuate one another’s sentences with drawn out “yeeeeeahs”. They oscillate between generic, boilerplate statements about their work (“We’re actually eager about collaboration, yeah?”) and genuinely partaking yarns.
They weren’t born, for instance: they popped out of a patch of Astroturf between Brixton and Loughborough Junction, and shortly afterwards carried out their first ever set at a purgatory-like bus cease close by, which they couldn’t go away till they turned actually nice DJs. They examine themselves to vape flavours: Earther is extra like Sadboy Blue whereas Shrimp feels aligned with Ego Demise. Vape is vital to Two Shell; it had a “ghostly presence”, together with a Lime scooter and a selfie stick, the day they “reverse slipped” out of that Astroturf.
You see the place that is going: the 2 ladies I spend a painful 45 minutes chatting to are nearly undoubtedly not Two Shell. I do know this as a result of if the duo actually needed to be nameless, they may have completed a significantly better job; lower than 5 minutes of Googling will internet you a Firms Home itemizing tying the tackle of their Deptford studio to Womb Ltd, previously Two Shell Ltd, whose administrators, Patrick Edwards Lewis, 33, and Jack Riou Benson, 35, are additionally credited writers on a bunch of Two Shell songs on varied songwriting databases. (Followers on Reddit, clearly, have recognized this info for a very long time.) Lewis and Benson, childhood pals raised in south London, have been making dance music for fairly a couple of years below varied names, together with Jynx and Participant 2, though none of it has the good alien thrill of the music they make as Two Shell.
The decoy duo give me a mysterious-looking USB coated in gray putty, however after I plug it in it’s been corrupted. I initially assume that is yet one more layer to the bit, however I’ve in reality develop into sufferer to my newfound Two Shell truther mentality: “It was not meant to be corrupt however undecided what was meant to be on there,” their supervisor texts me later.
Two Shell’s publicist didn’t realise they’d despatched decoys, and after I run into him a few nights later, he says, with slight exasperation, that he actually thought the duo have been utilizing this interview as a possibility to provide the jokes a relaxation for a second and simply speak about their music. He then tells me that “Two Shell is definitely 25 individuals” – alluding to the massive community required to keep up issues like shell.tech, the ever-changing password-protected website by way of which they launch new music – earlier than conceding that, sure, the music half possible is simply two guys.
After their album is launched, it turns into clear that some advance variations despatched out to the press to assessment have been completely completely different from the completed factor; two editors at Pitchfork every acquired their very own variations, and people variations have been completely different to the one despatched to the author assigned to assessment the album.
Two Shell have been releasing music for an excellent 5 years now – together with a collaboration with FKA twigs, and a twisted rework of Sugababes’ Spherical Spherical endorsed by the group – and I’m more and more of the opinion that the prankster aspect of the duo may need performed higher throughout their post-pandemic breakout years, when the video games and methods heightened the anticipation and thrill of lastly going out once more. I head to the duo’s long-running ShellTek evening at London’s Ormside Tasks the day after my interview, courtesy of a token offered alongside my dud USB that might grant me entry each week, and am stunned to see that this release-week occasion is sparsely attended. A man within the people who smoke’ space tells me that “ShellTek is all the time empty” earlier than catching himself: “It’s meant to be empty – it’s a spot for individuals to play their craziest, weirdest music.”
You might charitably say that Two Shell’s pranks are a satire on rampant self-promotion within the age of social media, though they do current a conundrum: is a labyrinthine system of trick mirrors and trapdoors the absence of selling, or tons and plenty of it? Two Shell, the album, is a sadder, much less sugary affair than earlier releases – and emphatic affirmation that the music has and sure all the time would be the most partaking, thrilling a part of the mission.
Shrimp prompt to me that perhaps the 2 issues should be linked: “We love pranks, however we don’t suppose they make it any much less honest,” she stated. “When one thing’s humorous, you’ll be able to really inform the reality, get to a different degree. It’s nearly the most honest.”
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