Elphi - CHAINS
CHAINS
Elphi
EP
Pop
Liam Murphy
January 31, 2022
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From the very start of sizzling opener SNARE TRACK, the listener should be able to gather an awareness of what they’ve let themselves in for. Snare drums peel off at a breakneck speed slicing a hole through which digital viscera pours out, before being neatly sewn up by the surgical drum work that ensues. As the track’s title would have you guess, the focus is everyone’s favourite staccato percussion. Snares control much of the track, and supply it with its incendiary texture. But this does not hinder twofold from diverting attention with gritty bass and tightly wound vocal samples. A merciless attitude is presented through the harsh experimental club sound that is as confident as it is strong.
Kick drums pull up strands of stringy dissonant sound on I MEAN NO DISRESPECT (wired tool). Rapidly, much like on the opening track, twofold works this cacophonous sound into a fast-paced and dance-y rhythm. The style’s forthright sound is bolstered by the lack of reverb or anything to cloud the soundscape. Everything is incredibly vivid, proudly presenting itself in its clattering, chaotic brilliance. Club whistles belt out as shards of metal and data bounce off of each other.
BUT I GOT TIME (mangled ha) ups the ante on the industrial sound, the listener loses house kick drums amidst intimidating metallic drones that hover toward us from all around. Before we know it, the very floor of the mix is bubbling like a bass-y soup. Barbed metal pulling itself slowly across our view. twofold states that the EP as a whole is a ‘love letter to Black queer joy and creativity’ and through the mangled melodies and heady beat on this penultimate track, one can certainly hear a joyousness and freeing energy in the ruthless experimental sound.
Slowly our surroundings come into focus, enticed toward us by the monotony of a dull kick drum. twofold slots jagged percussion and gloomy euphoria into the spaces between the pounding, and a strange landscape of exploding glacial ice and water ameliorates. Tuned tom drums give the droning rhythm a certain persevering dynamic, instead of being hammered by the kick, the listener finds themselves clambering on to each syncopated platform like some industrial platformer.
The way in which twofold melds an unmistakably dance-y energy with intricately textured experimental soundscapes is so entertaining to behold. Brazen in its seditiousness, Trax with love perfectly harnesses the eternally burgeoning energy of the queer black club scene. As we navigate through the EP, the artist pulls no punches and welcomes us with harsh and inevitably rewarding sounds, rather than saccharine sameness.
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