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In an interview with Resident Advisor earlier this year, the semi-anonymous UK duo Two Shell lightly defended the use of AI in music while admitting to using AI-powered tools “for quite a few years,” setting off a firestorm in the comments of an Instagram clip of that part of the conversation. The duo did so while wearing hoods over their faces, in front of a projection of a data center, in case you didn’t get the idea—that AI is here to stay, that Two Shell are merely using it as the “instrument” it is. They compared the resistance to AI tools to the bygone idea of making music “using a computer” as not only outlandish but also soulless and “wacky,” invoking attempts by musicians unions to ban synthesizers.
For many fans, the interview confirmed what seemed obvious: that the duo’s music, once cartoonish and out there, had settled into something boring and self-satisfied, and tinged with an uncomfortable whiff of generative AI. Worse yet, Two Shell followed up their defense by arguing, implausibly, “There’s an irony with [AI], where I think sometimes it feels like the emptiness of it almost helps you identify the soul in it.”
No score yet, be the first to add.
That so-fake-it’s-real argument has underpinned many provocative artistic movements over the years. In terms of dance music, it makes me think of early PC Music. When that crew debuted with their perfect polymeric pop, no one could decide if it was sincere, ironic, or ambivalent; the doubt was itself part of the appeal. But the difference is that those early records by Hannah Diamond and GFOTY were good—never mind written and produced by humans. Two Shell’s music, in comparison, is no longer good, and has only gotten worse.
“The Nightmare,” the opening track of their new album, reveals the problem almost instantly. It’s built around a bubbly, effervescent ascending melody that reminds me of SOPHIE’s “Nothing More to Say” with all the fun ripped out, while a flimsy voice sings, “Welcome to the nightmare.” The vocals scan as inhuman, the drums don’t really do much, and all the synths seem just a little off, everything brushed with a plasticky sheen that sounds like it came right off the assembly line, made by robotic arms for robotic arms.
That uneasy feeling settles over the rest of Infinite Now like suffocating humidity. No matter how hard the duo tries to get things going, the spark never catches: Build-ups and drops land with a thud, because how can you have payoff without tension? The hooks are aggravating because the vocals are aggravating, like on “Lose Control,” a pale imitation of Daft Punk’s “One More Time,” that group’s painstaking ingenuity replaced by “it’s just a tool” deflection. Worse yet, the album is mired in a mid-tempo slog that feels like it was designed for late-morning Ibiza zombies. “Follow” is like something tech-house stalwart Jamie Jones could have cooked up in his sleep in 2009, far removed from the genius of Two Shell’s “home” or even their latter-day collaboration with FKA twigs, “Talk to Me.”
Even if it used some of the same AI tools, “Talk to Me” was fun because, at that point, it exemplified the group’s greatest sonic tricks. They had a way of abusing filters and volume fluctuations to create club music that felt like it was always in flux—thrillingly volatile, vocals stretched thin and passed through a sieve. But the possibility that these new tracks were augmented by AI saps the novelty, in the same way that an AI video of a raccoon climbing a string of Christmas lights isn’t cute in the slightest. For a while, Two Shell’s antics—like sending in decoy DJs pretending to mix—were divisive, but at least the music was exciting. By now, the project feels cynical. Not only can they not be bothered to show up to their own gigs, but they’d also like us to believe they can’t even muster the energy to make their own songs.
Infinite Now isn’t entirely devoid of enjoyable moments. “Closer to the Sound” is probably the best track here, but it also sounds like a limp AraabMuzik beat, and the vocoder and Italo-disco arpeggios don’t mesh. “Thing About You” has a catchy vocal, but it’s a pale imitation of Y2K pop-garage. And “Clouds” attempts the classic emotional closing shot with a strange trap-dubstep grind, a spark of an idea left to fizzle out on its own. Things get bleaker when you consider Infinite Now’s 55-track bonus album, loaded with alternate versions, throwaways, and sketches. That surfeit increases the suspicion that the original LP may be a cherry-picked selection of what those data centers drummed up (fans have picked up references to the music-generating app Suno over the past few years, though the jury is officially still out on what exactly Two Shell may be using). It’s a dump of random tracks that sound like they were made not just for an imaginary dancefloor, but some kind of imaginary world that’s been hallucinated into being.
Something else nags about the record: “The Nightmare” is pretty darn upbeat for a track with the chorus, “Welcome to the nightmare.” The album’s press notes explain that contradiction away with something about staying positive amid “dark and confusing times,” a half-baked gesture that extends to the whole album. It would be different if there was a theme or a feeling running through these songs, but instead there’s just indifference—not so much escapism from chaos and political upheaval as a denial of the human condition itself. Even “Rubberz” has more personality than this.
Having exhausted their ability to captivate audiences in the real world, Two Shell retreat to some virtual simulacrum where they can pump out endless interchangeable tracks that no one will remember or care about. Even their halfhearted defense of AI feels like a troll. But when the lines between sincerity and cynicism are so blurred, does intention even matter? Infinite Now just kind of sucks. There’s no sense of effort or craft behind the music itself, and the duo’s latest attempts at iconoclasm feel sneeringly contemptuous. You can only do something ironically for so long before it becomes unironic. At one point, Two Shell were one of the most exciting acts in underground dance music. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?
