Initially cynical about the prevalence of nostalgia in contemporary culture, Two Shell eventually came to the decision that by resisting it, they would miss the intended target. “It's almost like a new thing for us with this album, doing that, and, yeah, it's felt pretty good,” they reveal. “It's like the future nostalgia, almost, is how we thought about it at times. Everything is kind of a version of something previous now, because of the speed of how quickly things reference outside of where they started.”

For all the conversation surrounding its creation and confusing marketing, the objective of is one of simplicity; to make the music connect with instant familiarity despite all its outward futurism. Even in an internet culture where musical references of every era are deconstructed, recombined, and endlessly recirculated, the familiar can still be recontextualised. “Simplicity as a reaction to the complexities of everything going on. We can’t speak for other people, but we’ve felt the world is not in a good place, and in making it we’ve found a lot of peace and joy.”

It’s a sentiment that runs through “The Nightmare”, the big beat track that helped establish the direction of this new era. Appropriately apocalyptic for the moment – we are, of course, a world in permanent crisis – its Eurodance floor call offers a brief escape from the despair all around us. “We were going around playing a lot of that properly nihilistic music, like things are fucked, and we got to the point where we were a bit like, ‘Is this what we're bringing people?’ We're not here to bring that, we're here to bring good shit and make people feel good.”

There is, they argue, value in acknowledging the state of the world in their music by making room for pleasure, precisely because everything else feels so difficult to process. They point to personalised algorithms as a source of fragmentation, where people living next door to one another inhabit disparate realities. “Having spent so long thinking about all this stuff and feeling like it's not getting better, it's like, okay, what are we meant to do? Make something that feels good.” Environmental anxiety, technological acceleration, and socio-political division all contribute to what Two Shell render as “the nightmare”.

’s lead-in first cropped up in February, as Two Shell took over Brixton’s Phonox club across 4 Fridays; a special guest behind the decks in Jack Harlow. Their connection with the Louisville rapper began when they received a direct message offering his number. Two Shell responded by sending a barrage of beats, encouraging Harlow to experiment more in his own music. They expected the suggestion might cause friction; instead, Harlow welcomed it. “We've just built a really beautiful relationship with him, really. We love the guy, very very special soul.”