Violets is a requiem for the new dark age. A memoir of a dying era, defined by the years of an inevitably dichotomized and isolated nation.
On their long-awaited sixth full length, the duo of Greg Malcolm and Chad Mossholder move from the muggy backwoods of their early work towards the sonic approximation of icy remoteness. Created by a process of long distance file-sharing, the layers of Violets mesh together in a synchronous and fragile splendor, melding disembodied vocals, guitar rattles and crispy unpredictability to create a modern classic.
The recurring theme of Violets is indeed a fascination with the human voice – voyeuristic telephone and CB conversations, the musings of a girl on dictaphone, crowd noises from anti-war rallies - these elements hover just beneath the lush and temperamental musical surface. On "Endormie", guitar plucks crystallize in real-time, while the voice of legendary Cranes vocalist Alison Shaw surfaces in frosted gasps. The result is a calming and inescapable melancholic pull. Elsewhere, the massive leitmotif of "Disconnected" evokes images of a lonely neighbor practicing his weathered 6-string in a barren room while explosions overtake his home and psyche.
Twine have crafted their most highly polarizing and fully realized record to date. Violets casts a haunting shadow and its many inspirations, from the largesse of world affairs, to the minutiae of domestic life, reinforce its startling relevance in an age of cultural fracture and discontent.
The Twinesound is a structure meets noise vs. melody sound, always morphing into something new. Glitchy beats collapse into warm swarms of static, long atmospheric drones become abstract soundscapes where cold dark ambience and stark angular structures meetAs much a noisy, ambient experience as any heard today, from Fennesz's Endless Summer to Black Dice's Beaches and Canyons, Twine also draws influence from the free-floating, sand-blasted vocals of Cocteau Twins. This is a story of the fuzzy lines that connect and distance humanity, and the spiritual in-between that emerges in the nighttime hours.
**THESE ARE LINKS - CLICK ON THEM**
:: urbanmag review :: stylus magazine review :: milk factory uk interview :: junkmedia interview :: pitchfork media review 01 :: pitchfork media review 02 :: remix magazine review :: twine idm @ sony :: prefix mag review :: scene interview :: twine @ discogs.com :: all music guide :: either/or @ sony
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Check out the new "Endormie" video from Twine's Violet's album. Featuring Alison Shaw of The Cranes:
GOOGLE TWINE+IDM+MUSIC // CLICK ME
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-------------------REVIEWS
"By customary definition, Twine is an IDM act, but the comparisons that stream through my head when I'm listening to this record come from elsewhere. The beats are nothing alike and Twine haven't a lick of hip-hop in them, but I can't help thinking of DJ Shadow's Endtroducing, the way this record uses disembodied voices and builds spacious atmosphere brick by brick. There's also a hint of Stars of the Lid in the drones that Twine favor this time out, and cinematic rock a la Godspeed seems somehow related, although Twine eschew extreme dynamics, and their only conventional instruments are guitar and piano, both of which are treated and looped." - Pitchfork Media
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"The most impressive moment of this album is to be found on the closing There Is No One Else. Arguably one of the most melancholic moments heard on an electronic record for a while, the pure approach to sound and the complex positioning resulting is at once deeply poetic.Recorder is by all means an absolute masterpiece, achieving more than any of Twines previous albums the synergy between abstraction and emotion. Already on a par with the likes of Autechre, Twine are slowly making their own mark on the electronic world." - Milkfactory UK
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"Twines new self-titled debut for Ann Arbor, Michigans Ghostly International is a triumphant culmination of the groups vision. The disc begins with G_R_V, a red herring of a track whose tentative acoustic-guitar picking, static and a mundane phone conversation dont prepare you for the extraordinary music to follow. But track 2, Plectrum, reveals Twines unique modus operandi in full flower. Building tension with a tightly coiled guitar riff and a seemingly sedated asylum patient reciting a hypnotic mantra (Get on, get on, was she?), Twine deftly weave in subliminal operatic female vocals, haywire electronics, and a sample of a Southern gent discussing guitar and banjo playing. The contrasting voices and instruments create a pleasing cognitive dissonance. On Piano, chords from that instrument are tweaked into a luminous digital glow, while a forlorn dirge, like Main scoring a David Lynch western, fills in the background. The track exemplifies Twines penchant for crafting beautiful tuneage that struggles through a software-erected forcefield." - Stylus Magazine
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".But there's also something to be said for electronic music that remains grounded, emotionally accessible, and clearly of this earth. And it's in this class of electronic records that Twine's Recorder falls. Rather than sounding like the outgrowth of endless experiment, Recorder sounds like it was laid out carefully before the first mouse had been clicked, the whole thing designed to realize very specific musical goals. This is no pile-up of exhaustively rendered Max/MSP patches. Despite the fact that the album is composed on computer, Recorder sounds orchestral, with dense layers of sound reverberating in a defined space. It's the anything-goes spirit of abstract IDM applied to sweeping dramatic gestures, a laptop version of the soundtrack to Apocalypse Now. And at this moment in the music's development, it sounds refreshing." - Pitchfork Media
