TWINS touches down on Bravura with 'Solid State Skin', a four-track EP charting his latest dancefloor-inspired expeditions into the realms of house, industrial, acid, techno, 303-laden funk and sincere, synth-infused dance music.
Whether it's as label owner at both CGI Records (house/techno/club) and DKA Records (industrial/wave/synth); or DJing / producing as TWINS as well as under his real name, Atlanta-based Matt Weiner is emerging as one of the most engaging voices on today's electronic music landscape. Having spent the better part of a decade revelling in a mutant murk that intersects synth-pop with Featureless Ghost and industrial-dance grooves in his own right on LPs issued by Ruralfaune and Clan Destine, Weiner has carved out his own niche, developing a sound that's as distinctive and novel as it is familiar; sinister as it is seductive; soft and deeply emotional as it is abrasive and rough-hewn.
On ‘Solid State Skin’, TWINS takes his myriad influences and channels them into a four track account of our dystopian, digital lives. 'IIIII' (Five Eyes) starts proceedings with a bump. Each part, from the opening funk of the 303 and level boss-esque 8-bit stabs to the dark anthemic strings, creep in before receding again, only to be replaced by another apparently benign yet menacing sequence. On 'Helpless', Weiner employs sampled drums, bongos and huge toms, all played with machine precision under swishing noise patterns that dart back and forth, soaring to a point before falling, lost in the fog. If 'Helpless' soars and then terrifyingly descends, 'Plugged' is the reemergence. TWINS harnesses the opening tracks' tension and blasts it back out in controlled flourishes, ripples of data darting between nodes all the while underpinned by a dark, funk-infused bass. The opening strains of final track ‘Heartbleed’, by contrast, are an altogether lighter affair: synthetic droplets illuminate a Detroit skyline backed by portly pneumatic toms and ice-cold strings, before Weiner pans out, revealing the post industrial cityscape below with a gravelly, tough-as-nails bass providing the contrast to the light show.