It’s inevitable New York trio Twi The Humble Feather will wear Animal Collective comparisons like bruises, but it’s more interesting to look beyond the patterns of their chanting falsettos to the differences. Live, Anthony Lebron, Hektor Fontanez, and Bryan Doring each play an acoustic guitar that accompanies and doubles the harmonies, exhalations, and whispers. You won’t find electronics or pedals or boxes. There are no drums, though there is percussion (strings against wood, hands against strings, guitars). Overall, the work exhibits minimal and classical spaciousness, a liberal use of silence. In that sense, it’s fitting they recently toured with Jose Gonzalez. “Higher Than The End” is the opening track from the band’s five-song debut Music For Spaceships And Forests. It includes some bird sounds and ambient accents, but otherwise seems to be emerging from three sets of hands and vocal cords.
Beyond A.C. on some tracks, another comparison could be Grizzly Bear, though Twi’s guitars are more prominent/Flamenco intricate, the pauses more pronounced. A helpful set of Influences: “spaceships, forests, lego, grito, gamelan, carl orff (gassenhauer), philip glass (glassworks), animal collective (campfire songs), bach, xenakis, true primes, arvo part, shostakovich (quartet works), carlo domeniconi (koyunbaba), vivaldi, debussy, patrick farmer…”
Music For Spaceships And Forests is out via Friendly Ghost. For further listening head to Twi’s MySpace.
[Photo by Julianna Barwick]
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This is fantastic.
Wow, clearly someone’s been reading their music blogs! This is incredibly calculated, soulless, trend-chasing music. Yuck.
I rarely give into these kinds of prejudices, but this is the worst fucking band name I’ve heard in ages and I refuse to listen to it. Seriously, do they want to come off as a bunch of pussies? Well it worked.
i love it
hypnotic and beautiful. i look forward to more sweet sounds from these guys.
Awesome music for the rejuvenile in us all.
lovely, mesmerizing. i wanna see them play live!
lovely, mesmerizing. i wanna see them play live!
these guys are fantastic, and lovely people to boot. the AC comparisons are inevitable, but not as the person above suggested as a result of plagarism, but rather because the two bands are coming from a very similar place – i’ve been reliably informed that in AC’s early days (or perhaps pre-AC, i’m not sure) they’ve jammed and played together, and on top of having developed in the same location and music scene they’re inevitably going to be comparable.
For all you haters you should know that Twi is an amazing band, in fact this song “Higher Than The End” will be played in a Heineken commercial, featuring John Turturro, during the super bowl. Don’t be jealous Griffin. Stop crying. You sound like the biggest pussy of them all.
very nice – it’s got a good flow – feels right -there is thought behind this — not loud and stupid like the punks!
ppl shouldn’t discriminate because of the name the music is great its relaxing and definitaly unique.. but i guess there’s always going to be ppl that get upset and hate because they aren’t as talented but it’s cool im sure the band appriciates that too.