Steeped in the traditions of Javanese gamelan ensemble music, while seeking communion with shoegaze and indie rock, Ithaca’s Twin Court traces a delicate trail through an ancient sonic understory, surrendering and melting its listeners into artful meditative states.
The eight-piece ensemble boasts traditional and modern alternative rock instrumentation, from guitar to gendèr, and places equal emphasis on koan-like, lyrical song structures. Distant bells fade and swirl together with guttural low-end ambient stacks, crafting a specific yet strangely open universe ripe for self-projection. “Buka (Opening)” glazes into “Sounds of the Rise”, exploring reflections on time in a tidal sense: I heard it all through the tide / I watched your steps to place mine / Submerge me, I’ll fly / Resurface me in time.
Providing riffy indie splendor, “Out to Pasture” is solace for guitar-culture lovers who might’ve worried the youth were going electronica, now decades into fading EDM afterglow. Turns out, they were listening to shoegaze and post-rock the whole time. Twin Court weaves these effects-laden, rock-oriented sensibilities with the hypnotic, transcendent rhythmic structures of Javanese gamelan.
“Different Harbors” inspires a Sigur Rós headspace but offers more approachable R.E.M.-esque vocal phrases, yawning open with an elementary guitar hook. A more direct verse-chorus structure gives way and descends into a tingling breakdown, with more conventional drumming forward on “Broken Strands.”
Lyrically, we are drawn to experience rather than process and are provoked by intense banjo-like syncopation and Pavement guitar work: If the wind blew clouds astray, would you find heaven in the rain?
Blowing on ash before cracking with embers, acoustic pinpricks layer the introduction of “Iroh,” synthesizing into a wooden ocean of surf, cascading behind the track’s sole lyric like a carefully set sleeper sofa, sheets and all: Everything blows away.
Ryan M. Yarmel is a contributor to CITY.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
