ArtSpace by VirgoTwins

ArtSpace
In the spirit of the introspective Virgo, VirgoTwins presents a 10-song Hip-Hop meditation that returns us to the days of Atmosphere’s Overcast! and Sonic Sum’s The Sanity Annex, but with a unique ArtSpace approach, where the duo’s collective strength rests in their fluid approach to Hip-Hop traditions and concepts. The ArtSpace is the realm where creativity is never concluded but always ongoing, malleable, and multiplicitous, and the sonic imagination encapsulated in these potent and unique tracks alludes to various interpretations and possibilities on how we can live in and think about the world more progressively. In “Unspoken,” featuring DJ Presyce of the legendary Chicago collective The Molemen and one-time Rhymesayers artist as a member of Mass Hysteria, Gilead floats esoteric bars over an atmospherically heavy angel’s breath of a Boricua Sandy track describing his two provocative and history-revealing visions of the ancestors providing essential wisdom, one with Noble Drew Ali (founder of the Moorish Science Temple of America) and the other being his paternal grandfather from Belize. In “Othello’s Children in the ‘New World,’” named after the text by Moorish scholar José Pimienta-Bey, the Twins tear through the facades the current order of the world is built on. Over a menacing acidic and bassy Boricua Sandy track, Gilead plays the role of both a tenured university professor who tries to keep hidden the most hideous skeletons of the colonial past and a tenure track faculty member who wants to reveal what has been shrouded in the Masonic lodges of Harvard University. Tunes such as “Immortal (El Morro)” and “Veralydia” are imaginative and sharp efforts with verbal and sonic content up the alley of any Vangelis or Blue Sky Black Death enthusiast, showing that the Twins not only think deeply but will also cut you to pieces in an aesthetic sword fight. The cool yet energetic “Shadow Work” is one of the most transcendent moments of the project, as Boricua Sandy’s Nirvana, Dynospectrum, and Common Children-esque dreamscape sonic textures perfectly set up Gilead to live the stories of all unsung yet indispensable underground art heroes. “Empath” showcases the dynamic vocals of Chicago spoken word poet and singer Seven Santana, who connects the stanzas of the story of Gilead finding a water bug in his home and looking for a way for the two to coexist, told from both Gilead the water bug’s perspectives to a cool and pensive piano-driven double time instrumental. “A-Symbol” ends the freeform space of ArtSpace with just that: freeform. Here, the words are thrown together in ways that rely heavily on association and philological plays without any structure to ground the subject, loosely drawing from GZA’s “Fame” song but executed much more abstractly by the Twins, who take the site of “A-Symbol” to transform all the loose concepts of the album to form-evading magical liquid. Reminiscent of the early 2000s era of underground Hip-Hop while forging their own fluid identity in a sea of present-day artistic sameness, the VirgoTwins have delivered the quintessential album of the shadows for all turntables in 2023.



Check the video for the single "Unspoken" on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfI9DVi36xQ

VirgoTwins, a duo consisting of Chicago natives Boricua Sandy (production) and Tomorrow Kings member Gilead7 (MCing), present "Unspoken," the first single of their upcoming Damn That Noise full-length release, ArtSpace.