“Impressively compelling… [a] beautifully-constructed hybrid of disparate musical influences.”
Glide Magazine
“Aja has an amazingly powerfully voice that put together Fiona Apple and Arlo Guthrie.”
Sound Opinions
“Explosive, cathartic.”
Buzzbands.la
(TODAY JULY 17, 2020) – TWO, the new duo of Aja Volkman and Dan Epand formerly of LA indie rock outfit Nico Vega, share their debut EP Pull The Knife Out, on their own TWENTYTWO RECORDS label. The EP is written entirely by the duo with Epand producing. The EP also features the band’s first single, “
In This Rough” for which they shot an incredible drone-heavy, and surely quarantine-approved, music video.
The number TWO, in numerology, represents the feminine force. Grace and power working in tandem, to restore peace and balance into any relationship, into any situation. Aja Volkman and Dan Epand of the iconic L.A. indie rock-trio Nico Vega, rise like the phoenix from the ashes of their former selves, emerging as TWO. TWO, the band, is self-made, self-produced, and brought Volkman and Epand back together at a sacred threshold in their lives where everything else was coming undone…Forged from the fire of Volkman’s own heartbreak, TWO’s debut album Pull The Knife Out pours from that divine wound, the one that threatens to devour you whole, unless you find a way to reach for something larger than yourself. Every song was preciously penned while Volkman herself wrangled with what looked like would be the dissolution of a seven-year marriage to the love of her life. Epand recalls the day the call came in:
“I was on a ski lift in Big Bear when Aja called. Her voice was different. She asked if I struggled in my marriage. It was her way of letting me know that something wasn’t right. She had twin one-year-old girls and a six-year-old, and she was suddenly faced with the idea of being a single mother. She was crushed, broken… and she was mad. What followed was a torrent of songs, a cathartic stream of music. Every day. Sometimes two a day. She bombarded me with hauntingly brilliant voice memos, ideas for more and more songs.”
And with that call from the bottom, TWO was ignited, and with it a debut album, a quintessential anthemic breakup record that’ll make you wish you were getting over somebody. Hypnotically romantic and as cathartic with its righteous rage, as it is transcendent of the very pain that carved it. The sound distills grief so intimately, lyrically navigating its many stages with an impressive vocal vulnerability that delivers a stunning portrait of heartbreak.
Six months later, Aja and her husband would find their way back home. Their love and family resurrected, restored, made stronger, by that very loss. If you love something let it go, right?
Epand reminds us the project’s reach is larger than its origin love story: “It’s also a testament to the complexity of relationships. In a world where we are bombarded with idealistic notions of other people’s lives, let’s let this stand as the exact opposite; a genuine window into the challenging parts too.”
Volkman reflects on that period fondly now: “In a way, the separation was one of the purest times of my life. It taught me that expressing pain is equal to the expression of joy. We can’t know one without the other. Much of the music was written from the pain, the recklessness of my own ego. But it was a necessary exorcism, it was the transformation. The pain taught me that blame and shame are equal poisons. That self-acceptance and compassion are the path to contentment. Nothing happens to us. We are the creators of our own experience. How we chose to react to the pain that’s rising is the key to our own doing or undoing.”
THE TWO would like to invite you on a similar journey, as we find ourselves in a collective coming undone, one that deserves our most sacred of reckonings. So go ahead, pull the proverbial knife out of your own back. Dare to wrangle with your own wounded heart. Find the places inside yourself that threaten to steal our collective light.
TWO has the power to harmonize painful contradictions.
TWO is the great mediator.
TWO transcends.
TWO will source light, where there is only dark.
Have a listen, have a search.
