Vanishing Twin

Vanishing Twin are a London-based experimental electronic and psychedelic pop group active since 2015. The line-up includes Elliott Arndt, Cathy Lucas, Valentina Magaletti and Susumu Mukai. The group develops a playful, wide-ranging sound that draws on psychedelia, art pop, experimental music, hauntology, electronic textures, psychedelic pop and psychedelic rock.

Background and formation

The project forms around singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Cathy Lucas, who previously plays with My Sad Captains and Fanfarlo and begins her solo electronic pop project Orlando in 2014. Vanishing Twin grows out of the live band assembled for Orlando performances, with Magaletti on drums, Mukai on bass, Phil M.F.U. on keyboards and guitar, and Arndt on flute and percussion. The name refers to the medical condition in which one fetus in a multiple pregnancy is absorbed by the other, a situation that happened to Lucas and shapes the emotional starting point for the project.

Sound and influences

The band’s music folds together references to Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, Stereolab, Martin Denny and Can, but uses those influences in a way that remains distinct and light in touch. Their work often combines improvisation, reflective ideas and experimental arrangements with pop structure.

Albums and releases

Vanishing Twin’s debut album, Choose Your Own Adventure, appears in 2016 on Soundway Records and is produced with Malcolm Catto of Heliocentrics. It is informed by Lucas’s writing about her lost twin and by ideas around existence and evolution. The band follows it with the Dream by Numbers EP in 2017, which includes largely improvised material, and then with Magic & Machines, a set of spontaneous tracks recorded in one take in an old mill and issued by Blank Editions as a limited cassette release.

The second album, The Age of Immunology, arrives in 2019 and takes the earlier sessions as its basis. It presents itself as a protest against xenophobia in the UK and elsewhere, with the band singing in English, Italian, Japanese and French. In 2020, the group releases the instrumental EP In Piscina! to help finance a North American tour.

The third album, Ookii Gekkou, comes out in 2021 and is credited to the quartet of Lucas, Mukai, Magaletti and Phil M.F.U. Written and recorded during the COVID-19 lockdowns, its title uses a Japanese phrase meaning “big moonlight”, and the record draws on Piero Umiliani, Art Ensemble of Chicago and ELO.

Members and related work

Cathy Lucas’s earlier work with Fanfarlo, My Sad Captains and Orlando connects Vanishing Twin to a wider London independent scene. Valentina Magaletti is another former Fanfarlo member, and Susumu Mukai is also known as Zongamin. Phil M.F.U., who appears on earlier recordings and on Ookii Gekkou, is a former member of Broadcast.