Two People in a Room - Two People In A Room

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5...according to our Phil on Thu 30 Jun, 2011.

Here I am in ambient corner again! A brand new Home Normal! The recent batch has been ace and the Daniel Thomas Freeman album from last week blew my face off when I eventually got to hear it. Damn it was good! It's nice to see the label branching out into different sonic territories with this recent batch and this new album continues the exploration. I vaguely remember hearing the cassette we had in last year by these guys and thinking it was pretty good. The music is largely constructed by guitars and effects pedals and it's got quite a shoegazey feel to it. The opener reminds me of Barn Owl or something with it sounding like a desolate soundscape but you can see the sun just about to rise and you can feel hope returning. Plenty of melodies in betwixt the multi layers of drones, shoegazeyness and general emotiveness which smothers your ears all candy like. You get 5 tracks on the album all about 10 minutes each so there's plenty to get your teeth into! It's kind of like the Paris Texas soundtrack crossed with Barn Owl with some shoegazey business all on drugs and it works brilliantly. I'm so gonna go home and listen to this properly tonight! Genius.

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René Margraff and I have been in and out of touch for an age it seems now. I’ve known, worked with him and shared labels with him, under a different (still secret) name before, but many of you will know him as Pillowdiver. Two People In A Room is the work of the Berlin based René and Michelle Hughes. This is the follow-up to their 2010 cassette release ‘Wrapped In Plastic’.

There are so many facets to a piece of music, as indeed art itself, which move you, make you feel something long lost or hidden. Its that mysterious quality of something hidden and maybe even remembered suddenly that ignites a rush of blood and recognition of kinship with the spirit of the work, quite beyond the creator. I know this is all very fancy sounding, a little bit ‘spacey’ but there you go. Not many records have done that to me, no matter how much I adore them for differing reasons. In fact, its perhaps the first record which has ignited this sense of hidden self, of memory and spirit since My Bloody Valentine ‘Loveless’ or maybe Boards of Canada ‘Music Has The Right To Children’. Such albums reside in a different plain somehow, able to move people beyond themselves into a purer land of memory and Lewisian innocence. Its in this same world or plain that Two People In A Room create and mould their live guitar / stomp box laden music, and its bad-ass and beautiful.

Mastered by Ian Hawgood.
Photography by René Margraff.
Design by Jeremy Bible.