Black Armor by twofold

Following a flurry of self-released singles and EPs in 2022 with support from music press and DJs across the globe, twofold announces a full-length, club-ready digital release in the form of Black Armor, available April 21, 2023 through Bandcamp and streaming platforms.

Black Armor is a high-energy statement of twofold’s artistic intent that takes the rough-and-ready industrial aesthetic of their releases Restless energy and Trax with love into new realms of terror and catastrophe. The ten tracks collected here are aggressively atonal, dropping the sentimental keyboard and pad sounds utilized in the artist’s 22222222 single series in favor of a surplus of gritty mechanical textures and cinematic ambience. As always, hard-hitting percussion abounds, reflecting the influence of regional club scenes from across the world: hand drum patterns that recall UK funky, hyperactive derivations of Jersey club kicks, and toms inspired by the Japanese gorge scene. The result is a record that stakes a bold claim for twofold’s “reconstructed” club sound, straddling the line between peak-time DJ tools and solo headphone heaters with flushed, frosty swagger.

Tracks like “Glycerin” and “Filtrate” borrow sounds from triple-A games and sci-fi films and distort them just beyond recognition, generating robotic, alien grooves that writhe and pulsate beneath sharp drums. “Extreme UV” and title track “Black Armor” turn up this contrast to its extreme, morphing cinematic samples into earth-shattering impacts and dramatic effects worthy of any deconstructed club set. Never one to take themself too seriously, twofold maintains an irreverent attitude throughout, sampling such sounds as the Roblox “oof” (“Pointcloud”), vocal chops from Tiktok videos (“Lightweight” and “Bemotrizinol”), and computerized Pokémon cries (“Active Form” and “Accessory”).

When explaining the concepts that influenced Black Armor’s development, twofold paints a picture reflecting our collective experience during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic: anxieties around racist police violence, climate change, and a new virus spreading like wildfire, all tempered by an obsessive new interest in skincare driven by perpetual Zoom video calls.
They state, “I was workshopping ideas for a few tool tracks about sunscreen and sun protection, and the scope of that quickly expanded to general skincare. At the same time, I was re-processing the continual stress of racism in the United States, especially with 2022 marking ten years of public struggle against police brutality. Combined with the recent and ongoing pressure of Covid, and over three decades of global distress around climate change, all of these issues became something I wanted to comment on all at once.
"I decided to use skincare and sunscreen as a metaphor for resistance against those social issues, tying all these concepts together with Blackness as a source of cultural strength and resilience, and protecting the vulnerability and recognizing the strength that comes from being part of a marginalized group. The skin is the largest organ system on the body, and it protects you from the world around you. I wanted to ask: what happens when this protection is itself a vulnerability?”

In the wake of the tragic murder of Atlanta forest defender Tortuguita at the hands of Georgia State Police, addressing these questions—and the stress of societal collapse brought on by daily life in our forest-burning surveillance state—feels all the more urgent. Rest in power, Tortuguita. May your memory be a blessing.

Black Armor releases on April 21, 2023 on the twofold Bandcamp page and all streaming platforms. Two singles, “Lightweight” and “Discontinuity,” are available for digital pre-order on Bandcamp now.

Tactical sonic interventions

26, Atlanta producer/DJ making industrial and experimental Black dance + club music

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