#20 - Two Shell - "home" and "Memory" (tie)
#20 - Two Shell - "home" and "Memory" (tie)
For all of Two Shell’s madcap antics — making an article self-destruct after 24 hours, allegedly deploying decoys for live sets — what really counts is the music. I’ve listened to it in a variety of settings: headphones in my bed, out of car speakers on multiple road trips, muffled under conversation at a party, at a live show. What always strikes me is how soothingly steady the music is despite its frenetic pulse. There’s so much happening in bangers like “home” — fried vocals fluttering like metallic fairy chirrups, frisson-inducing percussion rolls, splatters of trebly sonic paint — but the layers are mixed with such ordered, tidy control they merge into one twitching organism. Even more organized and restrained but equally kinetic, “Memory” marshals bass booms and raining synth droplets into a small spartan army of clubby electricity. Try to resist nodding your head gently or moving your foot when it plays, you can’t.
I find it funny that Two Shell is often characterized as “hyperpop” (or some synonym of “hyperpop-tinged”) because the tag doesn’t really fit, whether you’re talking about the SOPHIE genus of capital-H HYPERPOP or the more lawless, rap-infected digicore scene. This is pure electronic music, without any inane quotables or incendiary drops or even a coherent vocal presence. It’s fast and intense but the instrumental scaffolding is totally seamless, so tightly programmed and tastefully haywire you almost long for it to suddenly crash and disintegrate a la Jane Remover’s “52 Blue Mondays”—give us some real havoc! Still, listening to this carefully controlled chaos offers its own pleasures. It’s almost like a very busy strain of ambient.
The list:
#25 - Destroy Lonely - “NOSTYLIST”
#24 - elusin - “Elksling”
#23 - skaiwater - “#miles”