Digital breadcrumbs into their world: A fan’s journey on the trail of Two Shell

In my previous research into Two Shell’s community, I noted how Two Shell has created a community without a centralised hub, instead infiltrating other internet communities such as r/TheOverload, the BlueDollarBillz YouTube channel and the CloudCore Discord server.

It’s a unique fandom dynamic which allows for sudden surprise takeovers of community hubs that lines up with Two Shell’s propensity to seize upon a platform like a circus rolling into town, and this happened all throughout the saga involving this rock of hidden secrets.

Two Shell first teased the “Boring Rock”, as they called it, about a week prior with a corecore-like video spinning, stretching and superimposing the rock on various graphics, including grass that reminds of Windows XP’s Bliss wallpaper. A warbly, very accentuated British voice announced “Something big is coming” atop a cover of Robbie Williams’ ‘Millennium’ and, aptly, ‘Rock DJ’. Despite there being no hint about the hidden Shard USB, the CloudCore server’s immediate reaction was stunned laughter before it whipped itself up into a frenzy, knowing deep down that, like everything Two Shell, this wasn’t as it seemed. At first, the Boring Rock was priced at £5 and a few endeavoured to part with their money to buy this goofy piece of merchandise for reasons of “science” and “rolling the dice”.

But as people bought more, the price started to increase within the launch hour, fluctuating more than Bitcoin and soaring to the point where this plain, simple rock was selling for as much as £400. Perhaps the scheme was designed to hold a mirror up at fans’ compulsive need to buy into an artist’s new limited-time merch drop, but rather than experiencing FOMO, it was those who didn’t buy the rock who looked at those who did with bafflement. The original joke of Two Shell was a piss-take of the celebrity and materialist culture embedded in club music, but at this moment, it felt like there was a danger of it circling back on themselves. Had they got people excited over a rock, or had they just reached rock bottom?

Listening to the Shard USB, it was the biggest insight into the Two Shell vault yet. Inside lay many curios such as the Pinocchio-esque tale of ‘Shelley Boy’, the ‘Avril’ mashup from the Lot Radio set, the more techno-leaning ‘fable’ tracks with a Latin club percussive flair, edits of deadmau5’s ‘Strobe’ and LMFAO’s ‘Party Rock Anthem’, and an out-of-nowhere cover of Steve Miller Band’s ‘Fly Like an Eagle’ titled ‘Fly Like a Seagull’. The collection was all tied together with Two Shell’s usual sonic palette of foggy glass textures, voices with Shroud of Turin-obscurity and the sounds of computers whizzing that challenge the computer’s original promise of pristine sheen with the sludgy overload of data that the current-day internet presents us. Every track starts and ends with the same clip of a small crowd applauding, removing any otherwise present feeling of being a solo explorer in the ether.

Read this next: Let’s get physical: How independent artists are reinventing the physical release format

As a product, the USB was a high-concept version of the exclusives USB, which has recently become a great way for independent labels and artists to make good money by releasing a catalogue of digital works with a degree of exclusivity. But in Two Shell fashion, they managed to instil a twist that would bring together the Boring Rock owners into a communal mission.

On its journey from wherever it came, not every file on the Shard arrived intact. There was also a series of unlistenable edits of FKA twigs, Jai Paul, Fireboy DML, Craig David and Blackhaine with mangled titles that had sharp bits of corrupted audio. As much as the Shard had given us a bounty of Two Shell material, had the duo really just teased new material in the form of corrupted files to keep up the wild goose chase? Later on, one fan told me that they had a friend who was working on fixing these corrupted tracks, but at the time of publication, they have not yet succeeded.

I posted my rock to the CloudCore Discord server and within moments, people were privately messaging me asking which version of the USB I had. Word on the server was that there were two versions between three people so far, one with 26 tracks and another with 14. My USB had 16 tracks, which fellow rock owners were excited to know about. Over the next week, as more and more Boring Rocks were delivered, it became apparent that each Shard was different with a unique set of tracks, and this slowly expanding circle digitally collected each one-by-one to build a master folder of all the Shard’s tracks. It became a community effort to piece the Shards back together again and make sense of the final collection of over 50 tracks, a journey of continual discovery that turned the idea of the exclusives USB on its head. Without the social interaction of discovering the rock and ensuing banding-together of this self-chosen group of people, us individuals would have only received a fraction of the rewards, and this is what Two Shell planned for.

(Side note: Many of the Boring Rock’s tracks would also be played live during Two Shell’s surprise set at a CloudCore club night at Corsica Studios. Donning all-black balaclavas with neon green shade glasses and wielding the Shard USB, one of the duo left the USB purposely positioned on the side of the DJ table, which a woman beside me noticed. When she asked one of the duo if she could keep it, they said “fuck it” and darted off-stage.)