A couple of weeks ago, the mysterious London electronic pranksters Two Shell posted a track called “✧ ɈᵾngҞooҟ – Talk To Me” on Bandcamp, and the took it down soon afterward. It was a shivery electronic ballad, and more versions of the same song followed, all featuring edited-together vocals from various different famous singers. After JungKook, Two Shell also posted versions with Frank Ocean, Taylor Swift, PinkPantheress, and Chris Martin. (Most of them have since been taken down.) One version, which is still up online, featured the voice of FKA twigs, and now twigs has come in for real to record a new version of “Talk To Me,” over a different instrumental.
This whole project, like so many other things from Two Shell, is a little hard to figure out; a press release describes the previous versions of “Talk To Me” as “a karaoke version and multiple iterations featuring vocal lines from recognisable voices.” But the latest version is a full-on FKA twigs collab, and she’s listed as one of the co-writers. It’s a glitchy, jittery dance jam, and its combination of melodic sweetness and big-beat boom reminds me of early-’00s trance if it was filtered through digital static.
FKA twigs has been busy lately, but she hasn’t been releasing a lot of music. She’s in a big summer movie, the upcoming remake of The Crow, and she says she’s got a new techno-inspired album coming out this year. In the Discord update where she talked about her new LP, twigs also said that she likes Two Shell, so “Talk To Me” could be a preview of where she’s heading with the new record. “Talk To Me” is the first proper twigs release since she came out with the one-off single “Killer” almost two years ago. Check it out below.
“Talk To Me” is out now on Young. Two Shell will play Coachella next month.