FOR VINYL ONLY! PRE-ORDER DIGITAL ALBUM AT
www.damn-that-noise.bandcamp.com
VirgoTwins
We know that opposite ends of magnets attract. We are also structured into the perspective that the universe as a whole functions in similar fashion. But we sometimes lose sight of the synergy bubbling between two humans who have almost everything in common. Enter VirgoTwins, composed of Chicago-born and Southern West Coast-residing Virgo MC Gilead7 and Producer Boricua Sandy. Both born in September and sharing a love for the essence of the Culture, the two met amidst networking in the underground Hip-Hop scenes of San Diego and other parts of Southern California and after years of knowing each other peripherally combined in the span of a few months to create an impactful record that mystically came together out of nowhere. Gilead is a member of the infamous Chicago Hip-Hop collective Tomorrow Kings (Nigger Rigged Time Machine, The Stand Alone Complex), and long-time solo artist with a slew of internationally distributed and well-received vinyl, CD, cassette and digital projects with various artists, labels and distributors such as Fatbeats, Vast Aire, Below System, Eternia, etc. He is also an author of the text Underground Rap as Religion: A Theopoetic Examination of a Process Aesthetic Religion (Routledge, 2019 hardcover; 2021 paperback), and an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Mn., where he teaches Hip-Hop Culture as a global philosophy of life and social justice. Boricua Sandy is no newcomer to the scene and is known for her exceptional and tireless work in the San Diego underground where she spearheads events and serves as liaison for the who’s who of indie Hip-Hop from Roc Marciano to 2MEX and beyond. Her lush and intelligent instrumental production has so far seen two very well-received releases through J57’s FiveSe7ven Collective label, namely the Boricua Sandy and J57 [beat tape] and her most recent (Sept. 2022) FiveSe7en Collective offering, Indigenous Goddess. Sandy is also a strong advocate for vegan lifestyles and natural medicine as pathways to holistic health. With such deep diverse yet similar resumes, Boricua Sandy and Gilead7 are ready for the world to hear them unified as the 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.
For more information on VirgoTwins and/or ArtSpace, please contact Jon Ivan Gill at
reservedrecords@gmail.com or by phone at 773-655-0395.
Public Relations:
Sam McAllister | Pitch Perfect PR — sam@pitchperfectpr.com, 773-942-6573
Expanded-Art Records:
www.expanded.art.records.de 
