An album lost in time. A lost treasure for the archives, Twin Headed Wolf’s album ‘Altarwise’ illustrates the first creative impulse of Branwen and Julie Kavanagh. Indeed it is the first album they ever made. All of their dreams, ideals, and ideas are contained within the ritual worlds of each song. They will share it with the world February 29th, 2024.
The first track from the album is out today (Thursday 1st February). ‘The Black Keys’: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ol944rL8FlA
Speaking about the song, the twins say:
“Branwen liked to take apart pianos. The twins wrote this song in the rain after the NCAD Valentines Ball while wearing their mothers’ dresses from the 80’s. The song fell out of their mouths.”
Twin Headed Wolf have been experimenting for many years with Time Travel. They trained in their late teens and early twenties by attempting to create music outside of the boundaries of time and bleeding into the otherworld. They played with timelessness, incorporating forgotten worlds into their music and inventing contexts of their very own, outside of timely reference points.
Being twice once and once twice as twins they seemed to have an untamed grasp on the fabric of time, and it began to behave erratically. Ergo, an album that they began in 2013 was balanced too delicately on the threshold of years and kept disappearing and reappearing with just enough time to work on it up until 2017. Once the masters were finalised it was sent to 29/2/2024, 11 years after its birth.
The album is a collection of windows into the worlds of songs. The themes surround experimental darkness lifted by ethereal blood harmonies and a host of sounds and whirring experiments that cannot be discerned or divorced from the ritual of each song. Indeed, one might think they hear anything from bones to bicycles to saws to clay pots or strange objects that have been given a musical voice, but all are effortlessly woven into the greater whole of the song.
‘Altarwise’ is about coming to terms with humanness and material reality when this experience does not match that of two beings who were raised in the heart of a dreamscape. They have learned how to hold hands with the muses and walk a strange path that takes them closer to the dream while reckoning with the darkness and managing to be being playful and light-hearted as they go. These songs are about spirit and the hot fire of its refinement.
The twins were once described as two little girls being playful about dark things. This is a place where their twin spirits gave the most of themselves. It is their favourite thing. ‘Altarwise’ is and will be the only official Twin Headed Wolf album. They hope you enjoy it.
250 limited edition ‘Altarwise’ vinyl will be available February 29th. Pre-order on Bandcamp: https://twinheadedwolf.bandcamp.com/
The Black Keys – Lyrics
Don’t come looking for me
In these rainy skies
If you’re hunting me down
Well I’ll be in disguise
I can’t undo the web of your lies
I can’t unstick all of these droning flies
On your piano
I am the black keys
I am your fever I am your disease
And when you exhale I am the wheeze
I am your vice and you’ll never be free
I hear the click clack of your shoes on the stones
Pulled by a thread you just can’t be alone
No matter how much you scrape scratch and moan
The one that you want will never be home
You tear the skin until it bleeds
You’ll find your ego among the weeds</em
This old sin you seem to need
Will rot and starve you
Just like a bad seed
