Rule of Two set out to make a summer song by putting their distinct sonic thumbprint on Robyn´s highly successful “Dancing On My Own” from 2010 and ended up creating an appealing five-song EP surrounding the track with their darkened dreamgaze sonics.
Yes, their version of “Dancing On My Own” is a light-footed, airy, and upbeat song, easily captivating long and warm summer days. Pulsating synths and beats open the song, and the vocals kickstart this danceable tune, putting their distinct soundscapes to work, making you feel the easy-going joy that is rising from the layered sonics. The video for the song is a tribute to summer joy:
But the song that opens the EP, “Wrong Place”, has a darker stream of sound at the start. The flowing Darkwave is joined by guitar strings forming a melody, which then turns into rhythmic layers below the relaxed, dreamy vocals. The soft pounding begins to grow around the vocals, immersing them. With a discordant spell, it drives the song forward until a subtle change makes the music flow forward with gliding effects until higher-pitched and swirling sounds end the track.
After the sprightly cover of Robyn´s song, “Marionette” opens with a hard pulsating rhythm and a somewhat fuzzy guitar. The hard beats and solid synth droplets continue as strong harmonic vocals emerge. In the background, the guitar moves back and forth before a dichotomic change of the rhythmic flow, with soft sounds rising and fast beats, pushes the eerie vocals forward. This song develops into quite hard synthpop with a darker gleam in the layers, even when it surges a bit, helped by the vocals. It surges towards lighter realms before dipping back into haunting, discordant Darkwave sounds. A wall of tumultuous, yet flowing, movements surrounds and nearly drowns out pulsating vocals before throbbing beats end the song.
“Bittersweet Awakening” takes the cue from the final throbs of the previous song and swirls into hurried vocals supported by distorted sounds and vocalizing opens the whole track. It pulls back into the opening, hurried bouncing sonics before it once more widens out with dramatic vocals and glissando sounds from synths and guitars. It picks up pace with the beats as the music flows forward with faint vocals. The melody slowly swirls and swells around the pulsating beats before the everything disappears and leaves the throbs to end the song.
The EP ends with a diverse song called “The Daily Grind”. Dark spiraling effects emanate at the song’s beginning, soon to be joined by unruly rhythm sticks and more surging sounds which become a background to the ethereal vocals. Listening deeply, you will notice that in the many layers, melodies are developed when vocals don’t lead the musical flow. It is driven forward by multiple heavy beats, making it quite engaging even if it is repetitive. The music surges, and the rhythms and beats become heftier and heftier, and synth sounds spiral and are discarded in all directions, close to Industrial music, before a shivering end.
Here at Veil of Sound, we have been lucky enough to follow the two musicians behind Rule of Two, Ronny Flissundet and Kristian Liljan, since they embarked on an expedition into new sonic soundscapes. With a background in Oslo´s metal underground, playing for decades in different bands with aggressive music rather than melodic, they wanted to use their immense creativity and make more melodic music, but still with a dark streak and they came up with an 80s inspired sound mixing Darkwave, Synthpop, Dreamgaze and Dreampop and thus making their distinct sound. Since their first single in March 2024, they have put out numerous singles, three EPs, and kaleidoscopic videos displaying the ambiguous relationship between technology and humans.
