2:54

The Internet has done wonders for aspiring musicians. Whereas once, the only way to get noticed was to doggedly gig your tits off and spend penniless hours stuffing envelopes with demos and timidly hopeful covering letters, now all you seem to need is a social networking profile with an uploaded mp3. Consider the case of 2:54, two sisters whose sole track was instantly picked up and reposted by the likes of Gorilla Vs Bear, VICE, The Independent and The Fader, the lattermost of which pointed out that the girls ‘look like badasses’, which indeed they do, in their black threads, their rock’n’roll tattoo-peppered arms lifting sweating pints of lager in a dim corner of an understated Dalston boozer (they’re locals).

Colette is draped in a loose shift dress, leaning to one side as though the dense London heat were leaning on her, trying to share her chair, while Hannah is inexplicably ensconced in a black leather biker jacket and looking cool in every sense of the word, despite the oppressive temperature – definitely badass! Both seem a little bewildered (though not unpleasantly so) by the snowball of attention their music has collected. The infamous track ‘Creeping’, from whence the media interest sprung, is a gorgeously abrasive dose of shoegaze, with a backbone built on harsh, metallic guitar crashes, coupled with sensual, deep and drowsy Mazzy-esque vocals and a stung, swollen bass line. There’s an intriguing darkness to the music, and a weight, which is beautifully counterbalanced with an effortlessly nimble, punk-tinged drive. Where did this hybrid of sounds come from?

“I don’t know, it just kind of came out,” says Hannah. “I mean, we listen to a lot of stuff but I don’t think we took much from it.”

“Yeah,” agrees Colette. “There was no plan, Hannah just started writing pieces of music and sending them to me.”

The sisters used to be in a punk band called Vulgarians, who were quite a hardcore outfit – “fast and loud”, as Colette describes it – but split up round about Christmas time. At that point they both dropped their guitars and didn’t touch them again until May, when they started sending each other bits of tracks, eventually meeting up and finishing the songs together. The end results were drastically different to their previous output with Vulgarians (or ‘the other band’ as they refer to it) – “Completely different!”, the sisters laugh.

Both Hannah and Colette play the guitar, and Hannah also took up bass and drum duties for the recordings they’ve made. But how the hell does that work when they play live?

“Oh, we haven’t played live yet,” says Colette. “We’ve done everything in our bedrooms, that’s just how it’s been, we only started a couple of months ago.” She explains that they don’t want to play gigs with a backing track and a drum machine, and their main method of playing and recording has been bedroom sessions with Garage Band, waiting for one or the other’s flatmate to go out – as Hannah puts it, “so we can make a racket in peace.” Now they have a proper rehearsal space and have found a bass player and a drummer to complete the live band. That’s what the girls have been up to today, they’ve been in the studio rehearsing (without the newly recruited boys), and the plan is to lock themselves away in said studio until October, working on the body of work they’ve come up with thus far, getting it ready for a live set. So is this it, ready to rock and roll?

“This is it,” says Colette confidently “the Real Deal!”

“We want this to be a life,” agrees Hannah.

“That’s the dream, for making music to be what we do,” Colette continues. “There’s no set plan, but we’d like to make a really special record – a collection of songs.”

This rough plan sounds vaguely familiar… Talk to anyone in a band that’s still finding its sea legs and they tend to fall into two categories: Hell-bent on world domination within the next fortnight, or playing it by ear, keeping the game plan vague, and focusing on making good music. For now, 2:54 reside in a sub category of the second option, the Hang On, There’s A Piece About Us On Which Website? category. Again, not outrageously out of the ordinary, thus is the power of the net that all you need is a MySpace and an uploaded track and the blogs are falling over each other to give you a shout out and re-post your mp3. In theory. It also helps to be making the right kind of music at the right time, and that’s exactly what 2:54 are doing, albeit completely inadvertently. They admit that there are a lot of female voices about at the minute, “There’s commercial stuff like Florence, then there’s bands like Beach House,” says Colette “but I don’t think anything that’s going on at the moment bears any reflection on what we’re doing.”

“As far as how we write,” Hannah explains, “I don’t think we pay much attention to what else is going on.”

“Of course we’re wary of being lumped in with something,” concedes Colette “because there’s definitely a new breed o - Loud and quiet Magazine

The Internet has done wonders for aspiring musicians. Whereas once, the only way to get noticed was to doggedly gig your tits off and spend penniless hours stuffing envelopes with demos and timidly hopeful covering letters, now all you seem to need is a social networking profile with an uploaded mp3. Consider the case of 2:54, two sisters whose sole track was instantly picked up and reposted by the likes of Gorilla Vs Bear, VICE, The Independent and The Fader, the lattermost of which pointed out that the girls ‘look like badasses’, which indeed they do, in their black threads, their rock’n’roll tattoo-peppered arms lifting sweating pints of lager in a dim corner of an understated Dalston boozer (they’re locals).

Colette is draped in a loose shift dress, leaning to one side as though the dense London heat were leaning on her, trying to share her chair, while Hannah is inexplicably ensconced in a black leather biker jacket and looking cool in every sense of the word, despite the oppressive temperature – definitely badass! Both seem a little bewildered (though not unpleasantly so) by the snowball of attention their music has collected. The infamous track ‘Creeping’, from whence the media interest sprung, is a gorgeously abrasive dose of shoegaze, with a backbone built on harsh, metallic guitar crashes, coupled with sensual, deep and drowsy Mazzy-esque vocals and a stung, swollen bass line. There’s an intriguing darkness to the music, and a weight, which is beautifully counterbalanced with an effortlessly nimble, punk-tinged drive. Where did this hybrid of sounds come from?

“I don’t know, it just kind of came out,” says Hannah. “I mean, we listen to a lot of stuff but I don’t think we took much from it.”

“Yeah,” agrees Colette. “There was no plan, Hannah just started writing pieces of music and sending them to me.”

The sisters used to be in a punk band called Vulgarians, who were quite a hardcore outfit – “fast and loud”, as Colette describes it – but split up round about Christmas time. At that point they both dropped their guitars and didn’t touch them again until May, when they started sending each other bits of tracks, eventually meeting up and finishing the songs together. The end results were drastically different to their previous output with Vulgarians (or ‘the other band’ as they refer to it) – “Completely different!”, the sisters laugh.

Both Hannah and Colette play the guitar, and Hannah also took up bass and drum duties for the recordings they’ve made. But how the hell does that work when they play live?

“Oh, we haven’t played live yet,” says Colette. “We’ve done everything in our bedrooms, that’s just how it’s been, we only started a couple of months ago.” She explains that they don’t want to play gigs with a backing track and a drum machine, and their main method of playing and recording has been bedroom sessions with Garage Band, waiting for one or the other’s flatmate to go out – as Hannah puts it, “so we can make a racket in peace.” Now they have a proper rehearsal space and have found a bass player and a drummer to complete the live band. That’s what the girls have been up to today, they’ve been in the studio rehearsing (without the newly recruited boys), and the plan is to lock themselves away in said studio until October, working on the body of work they’ve come up with thus far, getting it ready for a live set. So is this it, ready to rock and roll?

“This is it,” says Colette confidently “the Real Deal!”

“We want this to be a life,” agrees Hannah.

“That’s the dream, for making music to be what we do,” Colette continues. “There’s no set plan, but we’d like to make a really special record – a collection of songs.”

This rough plan sounds vaguely familiar… Talk to anyone in a band that’s still finding its sea legs and they tend to fall into two categories: Hell-bent on world domination within the next fortnight, or playing it by ear, keeping the game plan vague, and focusing on making good music. For now, 2:54 reside in a sub category of the second option, the Hang On, There’s A Piece About Us On Which Website? category. Again, not outrageously out of the ordinary, thus is the power of the net that all you need is a MySpace and an uploaded track and the blogs are falling over each other to give you a shout out and re-post your mp3. In theory. It also helps to be making the right kind of music at the right time, and that’s exactly what 2:54 are doing, albeit completely inadvertently. They admit that there are a lot of female voices about at the minute, “There’s commercial stuff like Florence, then there’s bands like Beach House,” says Colette “but I don’t think anything that’s going on at the moment bears any reflection on what we’re doing.”

“As far as how we write,” Hannah explains, “I don’t think we pay much attention to what else is going on.”

“Of course we’re wary of being lumped in with something,” concedes Colette “because there’s definitely a new breed o - Loud and quiet Magazine

“Creeping” makes us wish David Lynch would shoot a sequel to Wild at Heart (still starring Cage and Dern, obviously) so we could see how he uses its darkness to make uncomfortable scenes even more awkward. We could see something blowing up to the bent-string chorus, right before some hairy-faced man-creature flashes on the screen… or maybe a close-up of Dern’s hair blowing in the hot Nevada wind, free but somehow caged. It’ll never happen—Cage now requires more demanding roles—but it shows how adept 2:54 is at creating drama on the edge. Also, they are sisters named Hannah & Collette Thurow, and they look like badasses.

- The Fader

“Creeping” makes us wish David Lynch would shoot a sequel to Wild at Heart (still starring Cage and Dern, obviously) so we could see how he uses its darkness to make uncomfortable scenes even more awkward. We could see something blowing up to the bent-string chorus, right before some hairy-faced man-creature flashes on the screen… or maybe a close-up of Dern’s hair blowing in the hot Nevada wind, free but somehow caged. It’ll never happen—Cage now requires more demanding roles—but it shows how adept 2:54 is at creating drama on the edge. Also, they are sisters named Hannah & Collette Thurow, and they look like badasses.

- The Fader

You wouldn't automatically assume 2:54's favouritest thing ever was stoner rock on first listen to their blog-stirring 'Creeping'(click here to download). Old Mazzy Star and Anita O'Day seemed more obvious touchstones.

But within seconds my first conversation with sisters Colette and Hannah Thurlow turned to John Garcia's one-man 'Kyuss Reunion' show in Camden in a few weeks. They both had tickets. It seems the sibling duo were weened on scorched desert sounds, and the kindling dischord that nips at their growing set-list on closer inspection reveals tell-tale signs.

They've been working on bits that sound like Earth, or so Colette's flat mate noted when she overheard their practice session through a wall the other day. Their name itself is a reference to the exact track time when it 'kicks in' on their joint fave Melvins' song.

All this makes the sisters appear even cooler and hotter than you thought a minute ago, right? Which was already pretty hot and pretty cool. - NME

You wouldn't automatically assume 2:54's favouritest thing ever was stoner rock on first listen to their blog-stirring 'Creeping'(click here to download). Old Mazzy Star and Anita O'Day seemed more obvious touchstones.

But within seconds my first conversation with sisters Colette and Hannah Thurlow turned to John Garcia's one-man 'Kyuss Reunion' show in Camden in a few weeks. They both had tickets. It seems the sibling duo were weened on scorched desert sounds, and the kindling dischord that nips at their growing set-list on closer inspection reveals tell-tale signs.

They've been working on bits that sound like Earth, or so Colette's flat mate noted when she overheard their practice session through a wall the other day. Their name itself is a reference to the exact track time when it 'kicks in' on their joint fave Melvins' song.

All this makes the sisters appear even cooler and hotter than you thought a minute ago, right? Which was already pretty hot and pretty cool. - NME

New London duo 2.54 have been getting attention for their song "Creeping".

It's a delicious dash of moody shoegaze, with guitar lines that churn, roll and distort in a nice counterpoint to a hushed vocal. File between The XX and The Big Pink. The pair are unsigned and beyond the aforementioned track on MySpace (ind.pn/c08ay P), there's no further output. Likewise, there are only thin scraps of information about the band: "all noise", as they call it, is made by sisters Hannah and Colette Thurlow, who seem to share a penchant for leather biker jackets. If more efforts like "Creeping" follow, I imagine we'll be finding out plenty more about them soon enough. - The Independent

New London duo 2.54 have been getting attention for their song "Creeping".

It's a delicious dash of moody shoegaze, with guitar lines that churn, roll and distort in a nice counterpoint to a hushed vocal. File between The XX and The Big Pink. The pair are unsigned and beyond the aforementioned track on MySpace (ind.pn/c08ay P), there's no further output. Likewise, there are only thin scraps of information about the band: "all noise", as they call it, is made by sisters Hannah and Colette Thurlow, who seem to share a penchant for leather biker jackets. If more efforts like "Creeping" follow, I imagine we'll be finding out plenty more about them soon enough. - The Independent