Twin Court – Queen City Sounds and Art

Twin Court Conveys a Deep Sense of the Mystical Pastoral on Ambient Folk Gamelan Track “Iroh”

Twin Court from Ithaca, New York released its debut LP Forgotten Turns on March 1, 2025. The single “Iroh” displays the group’s seamless combination of post-rock musical ideas with the instrumentation and methods of Gamelan. The minimal lyrics “Everything blows away” repeated like a mantra is like a reminder of the impermanence of all things even those we are conditioned to think are eternal but in the course of time will be gone or transformed beyond our current recognition and sometimes this is ourselves during the course of a lifetime whether we consciously realize it or not. There is a pastoral quality of the textures, delicate, orchestrated tonality and percussion in the song reminiscent of where Phil Elverum has been with both The Microphones and especially Mount Eerie with a similar mindset in approaching the music. A freshness and spontaneity and an outlook that is keenly aware of the cycles and circles of our lives interweaving with one another akin to Black Elk’s mystic vision. The luminous “keyboard” sound in the song is in fact not electronic but the gendèr, a type of metallophone that naturally sounds otherworldly but whose resonant analog tone lends the music a calmingly mysterious resonance. Listen to “Iroh” on Spotify and follow Twin Court at the links provided.

Twin Court on Instagram

Twin Court on Bandcamp

Twin Court’s Thoughtful and Introspective “Wolf in the Breast” is a Lushly Melancholic Fusion of Non-Western Folk and Classic American Indie Rock

Twin Court’s use of what often sounds like improvised, and certainly unconventional, percussion and a bell that borders on discordant lends “Wolf in the Breast” a unique musical texture and a quality of something rough hewn like something from a non-Western folk tradition. But the songwriting with its soft vocals and delicately resonant guitar melodies are reminiscent of Yo La Tengo if that band had hailed from a more rural setting rather than Hoboken, New Jersey. There is a melancholic haze to the song that heightens aspect of thoughtful introspection. The lyrics are at times enigmatic and others seemingly an impressionistic meditation on how everyone has sides of themselves hidden away until the right experiences draw them out and how sides of our own personalities can sit firmly in our own blind spots until they’re brought into conscious focus in a way that makes them seem like they should have been obvious to us all along. Listen to “Wolf in the Breast” (not to be confused with the Cocteau Twins song of the same name) on YouTube and follow Twin Court at the links below.

Twin Court on Instagram

Twin Court’s Evocatively Enigmatic “Sage Creek” is Like a Fusion of 1970s Art Rock and Weirdo Indie Folk

“Sage Creek” by Ithaca, New York’s Twin Court is the kind of song that has a softness and vulnerability that one might most often associate with a slowcore or indie folk type of band. But there’s a tonal uniqueness that may come from the band’s use of gamelan, bonang and harmonium along with the guitars. The song structure is also rather avant-garde with repeated themes to hypnotic effect and layered, interlocking rhythms that one most often hears in music out of the 1970s art rock tradition like a far more mellow and minimal Magma or Yes when the latter is in its more pastoral moments. It’s a song worth taking in full because it rewards the patient listener as the song progresses from its spare beginnings to weaving in an array of sounds in miniature orchestral fashion with GK Fulton’s vocals hitting and sustaining notes that interact with the rest of the music at unorthodox but always interesting angles giving the whole song an enigmatic character that sustains your interest until the end. Astute listeners may even here resonance with “Blue Milk” by Stereolab and/or a Linda Perhacs song in their ability to stir the imagination and demand acceptance on their idiosyncratic terms. Listen to “Sage Creek” on YouTube and follow Twin Court at the links below.

Twin Court on Instagram