Gazelle Twin

I discovered her in the run-up to last year's EOY polls, and have been loving the hell out of her album ever since. For fans of Fever Ray, I'm guessing - it has a similar monochromatic intensity that's very rewarding, but if FR is snow and ice then GT is wind and sleet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANaabsQo-uA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOXJS6iS1fg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t01dYTecfS8

the album is called the entire city btw

i know v little about her other than this: i've quite enjoyed not doing the research and just sinking into the music (an advantage of getting into something so late you don't have to write about it). but god i love the melody of "changelings" and the way the synth becomes so intense towards the end of "men like gods"

See, I find this record paper thin and nothingy and I've listened to it at least twice and found nothing at all entered my memory about it at all. I don't understand.

It's a really good record, I played it a lot in the darker days at the end of last year. The production is way better than you expect from a lot of these bands, even if the lol-ethereal vocal lines can drift into gothic self-parody at times.

I'm responsible for the initial ILX sandbox recommendation. To parallel Lex's complaints about it not garnering much support after lobbying, I'll cop to discovering it perusing Any Decent Music? where it was one of 2011's critical "high-scorers" in electronica.

The album is very nicely poised between Lisa Gerrard and Fever Ray, so total Sanpaku-bait, but the second half definitely drags compared to the first. I envy the ILXers that call Brighton home, as it seems Elizabeth Walling doesn't tour elsewhere much.

i own this on vinyl and coincidentally it owns me~~

i love how she make such towering, brutalist sounds out of such a small sonic palette - the way the beats and synths grind up against each other is kind of awe-inspiring

Nice drum programming. Predictable chord + melody choices though, unsure whether to embrace full-on "religious doom" or to keep things pop; ends up sounding like lobby music for a boutique hotel.

A belated head's up:

http://images.emusic.com/music/images/album/133/570/13357010/600x600.jpg

The Entire City Remixed (Jun 4, 2012)

1 Nest (Flint Kids Remix)
2 Changelings (John Foxx & The Maths Remix)
3 Men Like Gods (Maya Postepski Remix)
4 I Am Shell I Am Bone (Scanner Remix)
5 Bell Tower (Bernholz Remix)
6 Men Like Gods (Nedry Remix)
7 Obelisk (Alphabets Heaven Remix)
8 Changelings (The Enormous Shadow Remix)
9 I Am Shell I Am Bone (ERAS Remix)
10 Men Like Gods (Zebra and Snake Remix)
11 The Entire City (Alteria Percepsyne Remix)
12 View of a Mountain (Soccer96 Remix)
13 Men Like Gods (Ghost Eyes Remix)

I've heard only the samples, but will advise when my emusic sub rolls over.

Nifty Wire cover here - http://thequietus.com/articles/11005-gazelle-twin-wire-heartbeat-cover

She's also done some cool work with John Foxx, gonna have to check out her album.

The Mammal EP (2013-01-28) preview on SoundCloud.

Just dl'd for a very reasonable $3.43 from emusic. The Kuedo remix of "Turn My Arm" is the immediate standout - 2013 track poll material, as might be the Clint Mansell remix of "This is My Hand" given more listens. The remixes are aesthetically coherent with the GTs own aesthetic, so the whole thing holds together fairly well vs. most eps w/remixes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUr4BXSy5PA

new single. liking it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH94d-uw4N8

http://www.spin.com/articles/gazelle-twin-anti-body-stream-ep-unflesh/

Obsessed with Belly of the Beast. Love the new one, too.

the new album is really awesome. completely different to the entire city, a lot harder work but worth it. no ethereal vocals, just a lot of grinding industrial beats and darkly muttered vengeance. captures ill health and body horror better than just about anything i've heard.

terrifying video for "anti body":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMiPD6EqbyQ

good grief, this is magnificent!

just got back from seeing her/them. very simple presentation - guy on synths in a red hoodie (her husband?), EB in a blue hoodie and that stocking facemask, the merest puff of dry ice - but was all pretty compelling imo. just played stuff off the new one afaict (have only heard it a couple of times though so could be wrong). maybe this is a terrible comparison but it kind of reminded me of the paranoia of PMT-era tricky or the massive attack of inertia creeps - the bass kick convulsing like a panicked heart, starving the songs of oxygen - but it's obviously not an unease fed by skunk or what have you, it's more the claustrophobia of an outsider that's trapped on the inside. excellent stuff anyhow

This is real top ten AOTY stuff for me.

incredible

really enjoyed her interview in the quietus as well

Even though the lyrics are a little on the side of "goth-princess cliche" I am really feeling this. It sounds so dark and brittle and her delivery is so convincing. What really strikes me about this is that Gazelle Twin doesn't seem to just like unusual sounds or timbres, but really understands why those production choices work and integrates them into the songs themselves - this album couldn't be imagined differently on a piano or a guitar, it is so bound up in its claustrophobic industrial atmosphere.

I am 15 seconds into "Unflesh" and this is fucking incredible

maybe this is a terrible comparison but it kind of reminded me of the paranoia of PMT-era tricky

yeah this is a good comparison, and actually it's specifically "vent", bc the paranoia is all centred around body horror really

i don't hear much goth-princess cliché in the lyrics at all. it feels v much like a horror film, the whole album seems to be recoiling from itself at all times

this is basically a stripped-down Pankow album

this is fucking amazing

yeah its good

exorcise, anti body, premonition, belly of the beast... hard to pick a favourite here

weird album though, half the time i'm really not sure that i should be enjoying it as much i am

but i suppose it's fascination more than it is pleasure

idk a bunch of these songs have really fun beats, so far it doesn't seem "fun" per se but it's def pleasurable

true and live there was dancing and all, but listen to the lyrics and uh eek

putting the -ick back into lyric

It's a weirdly good exercise album

Exercise, exorcise

I love the second half of the record but a huge chunk of the first half drives me batty. The slower, creepier stuff is astounding but the more beat driven songs annoy.

Gazelle Twin did a limited split EP with Tara Busch (under her I Speak Machine alias) last year, covering Ultravox & solo John Foxx songs. Lyrically, it seems to have contributed to Unflesh.

Walling appears unmasked on the first vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JcLBvmYKqo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jbb5VtwfFw

On review, that may be all Tara Busch on the I Speak Machine track. Still, I think the touring/openning for John Foxx & the Maths had some influence on the industrial turn of GTs album.

did anyone hear sofia hardig's album from 2006 or so? this reminds me of it

Great recommendation, katherine. It's The Need To Destroy, at most digital retailers. The other Hardig albums aren't comparable, AFAICT.

yeah that's the one

1. Unflesh

2. GUTS

3. Exorcise

4. Good Death

5. Anti Body

6. Child

7. Premonition

8. A1 Receptor

9. Belly Of The Beast

10. Human Touch

11. I Feel Blood

12. Still Life

I've only just put this on but the tracklist is nothing if not thematically consistent.

great review in the quietus lex!

also, more people should listen to this

The live show seemed to be really something, although on the night I was running late and so managed to miss all but three songs of it.

This album is really sticking with me.

Just got it today.

God imagine being really baked and wandering around a dark and unfamiliar place with this on. Shit is genuinely creepy and unsettling, not in a lazy slow creeping dread way, it's like being *pursued* by something.

Brian Wilson cover for *The Walking Dead*:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUlVo-jvG1o

ha i've been listening to that brian wilson album a lot lately

She's doing an audio-visual thing at the Barbican in November. It's in the cinema (!), and given it's entitled 'Fleshed Out' I'm anticipating traumatising levels of body horror.

The unflesh remix album is rwally good

Heads up, new album out of nowhere:

https://gazelletwin.bandcamp.com/album/kingdom-come

Also, another album next year.

And here is that new album, out in September.

https://gazelletwin.bandcamp.com/album/pastoral

Look for a story around release time...

Here's that story!

https://daily.bandcamp.com/2018/09/05/gazelle-twin-pastoral-interview/

Nice one! Very much looking forward to the new album.

seeing her at the album launch next week.

https://roughtrade.com/events/rough-trade-east-gazelle-twin

Hope its in full trickster adidas regalia, but that might actually give me the fear.

oh shit this new one!

This is seriously FIRE. Really digging this musically and lyrically.

Absolutely. One of my albums of the year.

Want her to collaborate with Scott Walker.

this falls into the 'almost great' category for me

Anyone else enjoying 'Deep England', the reimaging of 'Pastoral' with NYX, self-styled 'electronic drone choir'?

https://nyx-edc.bandcamp.com/album/deep-england

Well, I am. Seems like a fine meeting of minds to me. Strong folk horror vibes, and says something striking about the way the clammy hand of the past still has a grip on present in this place.

It’s very good. NYX’s own stuff is lovely too.