Since my discovery of the most sensuously exquisite pair of twins in the history of experimentalist music, I have only been able to marvel over the gleaming Garden Twins. It was during early 2014 when the duo popped out of Orange County, California perfectly wrapped in a fine, sleek and shiny gloss of curiosity. Now just after the drop of their debut album, 'Haha' , I get to delve into their world which immerses itself into voids of madness even greater than you could imagine.
As a gig goer, a good support band will warm you up inside and out. However it takes a great, sweaty and angsty, ballsy and ravenous one to truly peel open your pupils so it is unthinkable to blink for the rest of the night. One also may I say, that no one ( not even really Bristol's Big Jeff) 'knows'. Shame waltz onto the stage, most of the four members appearing to be in that post pubescent age, still eagerly fired up to be as boisterous as they desire. With somewhat of a missing presence up until this point on the internet, Shame soon prove that they are the twinkling family jewel out of a messy, long lost close line of relatives to Fat White Family. The lead singer leers on tipping point of the stage as if he can see a distant mirage to satisfy his quenching thirst for anarchy. Lumbering and righteous, Shame's brain dwindling set is a work of sweat-pressionism art.
The likeable factor about The Garden duo is shared by everyone who has ever cared to stream their psychotic soundcloud account into their own ears. Ultimately we all still hold a big '?' when it comes to pinning down any sort of label of sound, obsession or influence with The Garden. I stagger out of the exchange after 90 minutes of mayhem. Still I have no idea. But this is the very cherry on top of their identity, we all in the crowd get a glimpse on the tip of the iceberg of what it is like to be inside the brain, heart and soul of 'A garden twin' . A small seductive dosage which can only leave us grasping for more. But first of all, how did I amongst the other 150 people or so, end up with our feet on the ceiling.
With that said my review of The Garden need only be a long paragraph just to indicate the very pace of this 'vada vada' universe that the Bristol post punks, curious George's and leftfield of indie teenagers come to watch. Ultimately both the Shears twins tumble about the stage as if ballerinas who took a trip into the rabbit hole and emerge in full swing of an electro punk madness. Their set is a hefty 75 minutes or so to take us all on this journey into the unknown. But what is so perfect for this Bristol night, is the contorted, sickly rhythms reversing back onto themselves in 'All Smiles Over Here' to a drum n'bass- like thwomp; put Bristol's grime and guts into some California sunshine under the sound of 'Jester's Game' , it could be Massive Attack sped up on some acid and high tune synths. At times arguably the variation of The Garden's set may lack, but as soon as those dark and rumbling guitar riffs roll and vibrate under our feet it certainly climaxes, "shoot up shoot up if you've got a fucking face", Fletcher leers down to spitting distance of our own faces in areas of more minimal background chaos.
What becomes increasingly clear however in the last quarter or so of their set if the message and art of The Garden themselves. As if both chiselled jaw angels sent from the heavens of Orange County are guiders into the next timewarp of teenage mutiny and expression. The crowd during "I'll stop by Tomorrow Night" wobble to the oscillating space synth and 'breakfast club style" sort of do that thing where we shut our eyes and end up on the stage jamming with Wyatt during 'Vexation' , flipping his sticks in his hands naturally. At this point it truly feels like The Garden have given us that very "curious high" that all of us were so desperate to clasp on to, a slight grip at least of what possibly floats and tessellates in the twins. But Fletcher goes full on, the psychotic ending of 'Egg' is perfect. They seem to keep answering our curiosity in "I Guess We'll Never know' Wyatt gets of the drums and sweeps his angelic form in time to the ghostly synths. But enough of this melancholy drama. The Garden are fucking sick at rave ok. And they couldn't have come to a better place than downtown Bristol in a weird old room full of kids who aren't sure which subculture they belong to; acid, rave, punk, tech-rave- whatever. Here are tracks like 'Cloak' and ' This Could Build A Home' ( previously mastered together on an EP) which are literally throttling the room into a kaleidoscopic land, Fletcher pointing the microphone into our faces to scream back "Whatever Oh Well, Whatever Oh Well!" these songs surely don't belong on a sunny west coast but bashing out of some brutalist tower over in Stokes Croft. This music is the middle finger up to conventionalism and into a future of sound that is more recklessly innovative than anything else out there.
Fletcher soon throws the stage curtain over the first few rows of the crowd, so now we are inadvertently trapped into a vada vada abyss. This as I'm sure you can imagine is no bad thing. Captured under this tent of surrealism, track 15 on their album, " Together We Are Great" comes to memory, it is the deepest most loyal of all songs to The Garden, "We manifest ourselves, its time to take us of the shelf" as if we the young crowd pledge our loyalty to this array of sonic euphoria. At this point the rest of the crowd is shut off by the curtain whilst the rest of us have a distorted camping night out with Fletcher and Wyatt.
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