<a href="https://v-twin.bandcamp.com/album/archives">Archives by Vanishing Twin</a> The idea that an album could be made piecemeal, in different countries, via the internet, would have been inconceivable forty years ago. Such technology would have seemed strange; stranger still might have been the idea that the traditional method – that is, recording a series of songs in one place during a set period of time – is far less viable these days. The logistical demands of creative practice in 2026 mean a piecemeal approach is an all-too necessary solution for many artists. Studios and practice spaces are expensive to rent. It’s difficult to organise a group of busy people (who may not have made music their full-time profession) into one place to record. Vanishing Twin’s excellent new album, _Archives_ , was created in a so-called “virtual studio space”, and bears the marks of this method, but this is no bad thing at all. Replete with homemade instruments, chopped-up samples, and songs that bear many sticky fingerprints accumulated over months and years, _Archives_ is a thoroughly modern album. Brian Eno once said, “Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature.” Although Eno was referring to the various sonic qualities of CD, vinyl, and tape here, the same might be said of the process used in making this album. What is crucial is that Vanishing Twin have not tried to hide the fact that these songs were created, as the liner notes state, by people separated by hundreds of miles, at home studios in rural France and a boat in London. The songs are characterised by distinct sections, layers of samples, and differing levels of fidelity – i.e. elements that aren’t traditionally an issue when an album has been written and recorded in one room. Perhaps when Cathy Lucas, Valentina Magaletti, and Susumu Mukai started making this record, there were aspects that were “weird, ugly, uncomfortable”. It can’t have been easy making music this way, but necessity is the mother of invention. There’s a domesticity and intimacy to _Archives_ , from close mic’d recordings to the boxy room reverb that seem to root the vocals in ‘Life By The Hand’ and the drums in ‘Sugar Stone’ in a specific place. Vanishing Twin used a kind of Ship of Theseus-style approach to writing songs. (‘Writing’ seems an inadequate word here. Maybe ‘assembling’ is better, or even ‘cultivating’). Improvisation, overdubs, and pieced-together fragments of music mean songs have morphed and evolved. They grew new appendages, some eventually dropping their skeletal form. This is evoked by the bonkers mish-mash of styles. Take ‘Hazama’, which begins with plinky-plonky toy instruments before it reclines into anaesthetised dub played on (what sounds like) metal canisters. If you want an elevator pitch for _Archives_ , it’s _Chiastic Slide_ -era Autechre reimagine _The Wicker Man_ soundtrack’. Each member would rework samples, “edit studio sessions”, or even swap instruments – though the idea of Valentina Magaletti not playing drums is like Zinedine Zidane spending a game in goal. This means these sounds have gone through a process of marination and fermentation. Perhaps the glitchy effect on the percussion in ‘Familiar Fruit’ is simple enough – maybe it’s just one simple digital filter – but it _sounds_ as if it has been put through stages of physical alteration, with each successive version bearing the accumulated impressions of different hands. Such is the dissolution of roles and traditional songwriting techniques within the band that Cathy Lucas’ vocals tend to drape over this music rather than be the initial focus. They rarely settle, somehow sitting at right angles to the music. In ‘So Calm (Case Study No 8)’, the roiling guitar feedback and woodwind share the foreground with the singing. It is a rare and democratic songwriting ability that allows vocals only as much prominence as instrumentation. This is not to say that Lucas’ singing is karaoke-ish, as if the words have been cooked up in isolation (which can be an issue when working the way Vanishing Twin have on this record). However, Lucas’ voice is interchangeable with other elements in the same way, for example, any of the lo-fi synths or idiosyncratic percussion instruments are, and is not a constant; there are many songs with long instrumental intros, middle eights, and outros. This less seamless feel has made Vanishing Twin a more interesting prospect. Vanishing Twin – then a five-piece – arrived in 2015 with excellent psych-pop bona fides. They sounded like Stereolab, Sun Ra, and the gnarliest track on your favourite library music compilation. Hell, they even counted among their ranks an ex-member of Broadcast. But was there a slight lack of edge? It felt a little too seamless, at least at the start. Perhaps they worshipped too zealously at the altar of Laetitia Sadier. Vanishing Twin have recorded like this before – _Choose Your Own Adventure_ featured home-made electronics, while _The Age of Immunology_ featured material recorded on an iPhone – but Archives is more unapologetically raw. This sound is their own. During OutKast’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, André 3000 cited Jack White’s quote about how “great things start in little rooms”. There are thousands of classic albums made by a group of people who wrote, practised, and recorded songs together in little rooms, where they could see the whites of their bandmates’ eyes, but times have changed. Now you might see a blinking cursor or a WeTransfer link. What _Archives_ demonstrates is that collaborators can still enter a creative flow state whether that’s in a boat, a home studio, or a virtual studio space. The music finds a way. The result is different, but no less special. _Vanishing Twin’s Archives is out on Friday_