Photo courtesy of The Twins
British-Pakistani siblings Omar and Jamal Ikram have built a buzzing fanbase thanks to their chaotic blend of UK dance music and South Asian diasporic sounds. With their new EP, ‘There&Back,’ out now, the duo discussed dealing with sketchy A&Rs, their mysterious social media presence, and pulling sounds form unexpected sources.
May 22, 2026
BY Tara Chopra
We weren’t deeply connected to our roots growing up, so a lot of our work has resulted in us kind of rediscovering and reinterpreting that identity in our own way.
There’s something intoxicating about not knowing everything about an artist at once. In this clickbait age, where whatever hits your screen is at the whim of a numbing algorithm, mystery feels genuinely exciting and exhilarating. Obscure references, coded visuals, the slow burn of meandering rabbit holes. Tiny bits of information that tie the whole plot together is where the real thrill increasingly lies.
That very instinct led me to The Twins, 21-year-old British-Pakistani siblings Omar and Jamal Ikram. They’re covertly building a world of their own whilst tuning out the racist realities of growing up in Aldershot—a small, predominantly white town in England.
Structurally, they make hyperpop with PC Music aesthetics: razory synths, glitch-heavy production, and relentless momentum throughout. There’s a nocturnal, warehouse-dance energy to it. There are hip-hop sensibilities too, though South Asian vocal samples are chopped and tastefully woven into tracks to add rhythmic purpose, not just sonic flavor.
Currently in college, The Twins first began releasing music in 2024. Omar was drumming, obsessed with 3D printing and fashion design and Jamal was busy producing for his friends and rappers in the local scene. They eventually began experimenting together. In the fall of 2025, they released their debut album, TURMERIC, which quickly drew attention online, across music industry circles, and among record labels.
On their latest EP There&Back, they’re intentionally stripping away some of the hyperpop excess that defined their early work. The sampling remains central but obscure. Vocal snippets appear like fragments, while melodies sit cleaner and higher in the mix.
Jamal takes lead in the conversation as the expansive spokesperson for the duo, while Omar adds precise bits and layered context. What runs through the entire conversation is a mix of seriousness and humor. One minute they’re talking about their attentiveness to creative direction and long-term vision, and the next they’re completely deflating it, saying things like, “I guess we just made six TikTok sounds and put them out,” and deprecatingly referring to themselves as “idiots.” They refreshingly understand the value of opacity and trust listeners to meet them halfway. The music—and its surrounding aesthetics—is how The Twins tell their story.
What was it like growing up? How have your early years shaped you?
Jamal: We grew up in Aldershot.
Omar: Literally in the middle of nowhere.
Jamal: There were hardly any brown people in our town. It’s a really racist place. It’s one place where we’ve been jumped. We were out playing basketball late one time, and I remember some racist man just pulled up on us. It was me, Omar, and my girlfriend, and they tried to jump us, but Omar's just an indestructible man. They didn’t succeed, but it’s such a comedic village of sorts. There wasn’t really a community of people like us. We were some of the only kids of color in school. It definitely shaped our experiences but it also kind of pushed us to form our own sense of identity and community.
What was it like growing up in a British-Pakistani household? Were you exposed to a lot of Pakistani culture and Desi music?
Omar: No [laughs].
Jamal: Our parents were both working so we never really had any of that access, or any music playing at home.
Omar: We don’t even speak Urdu…which I know is a piss take.
Jamal: We weren’t deeply connected to our roots growing up, so a lot of our work has resulted in us kind of rediscovering and reinterpreting that identity in our own way.
How did you both get into music? Did you both just find each other amidst your own creative paths?
Jamal: I started making music early, just producing and experimenting in my bedroom. I just began recording local rappers, charging small amounts like 50 quid. I realized I was really fire at this. It helped me develop my early production and engineering skills.
Omar: I do vocals, and I’ve played drums since I was 11. I wasn’t making songs straight away. I went into other creative stuff too, like graphic design. I also love 3D printing work.
Jamal: Until I recruited you. [laughs] We had a period where we were just producing for other people, we had this studio the size of a kitchen and we’d sleep there. That was like our training ground.
Omar: Yeah, we eventually realized we were so inspired and weird and we had our own shit to say. The world of The Twins was already forming in our heads. It wasn’t like a sudden decision, it just made sense to start making our own music.
What’s your dynamic like?
Omar: It’s very back and forth but definitely intuitive. Like, we kind of already know what each other’s thinking half the time.
Jamal: Yeah, that’s the base of it. But we overlap a lot. Omar will come with ideas or concepts or references, sometimes like a whole vision for a track, and then I’ll build it out sonically. We can’t work remotely. We need to be in the same room, which is a bit tricky because we’re both in university right now, but we find the time to make it work.
Omar: A lot of our communication isn’t always verbal, we naturally bounce off each other in the room.
Jamal: One of us might come in with a full idea, but by the time we finish it together, it’s something completely different and usually better.
Omar: I’ll also do a lot of the visual research and world-building as well, so it’s not just the music. It’s everything around it.
There’s a sense of chaos in all your production work, but on the There&Back EP specifically, the chaos feels a lot more controlled, with an underlying sense of yearning. When you’re in that process, is there a method to the madness or is it more like you’re just learning how to sit inside the creative mess without resolving it?
Jamal: Yeah, I think it’s the second one, honestly.
I feel like that's kind of the whole premise of the project, but the clarity came from not trying to fix it too early. A lot of these choices stem from emotional complexities that I guess we’ve translated into chaos. It started from this feeling of not really fitting into places, like with family, friends, even just environments where you’re supposed to feel grounded. You end up using music as this escape, but then you realize the escape is the same feeling you were trying to get away from. That’s kind of what the EP feels like.
This project is a lot more thought through, though. We care about structure a lot more now. We took a lot of songs out in the process. I wonder if people will think it’s intentional or if we just made six chaotic ideas and called it a project. We might just be idiots, but it is intentional. We’re trusting ourselves to make the best of the best music.
You mention taking things out, which is interesting, because your early stuff felt very maximal. Was there a specific moment where you realized you needed to strip things back? Or was it more gradual, like slowly learning what not to do?
Omar: It was gradual, but there was a moment where it clicked. We had this phase where we’d make loads of stuff really quickly.
Jamal: It came from this hyper-creative itch. Some of them were like TikTok sounds [laughs], some were almost full tracks. Then we realized that no one else is going to understand this the way we do unless we actually shape it. It wasn’t about killing chaos, it was more like editing it until it actually meant something.
There’s a physical feeling to the production, like on “Lime Green” and “Holding On.” Rhythm does a lot of the emotional work. Was that always the idea, or did it come after the lyrics and ideas were already in place?
Jamal: A lot of it was definitely conscious. Rhythm sets the emotional tone, really. Even when we’re dealing with feelings like anxiety, isolation, or something more self-destructive, we don’t really start from language. We start from movement. It’s less about asking, “How do we write that?,” and more about, “What does that feel like physically?”
Even on a track like “Run,” it’s literally about that feeling of running away from something internal but still having momentum. You don’t stop, even when you want to. That manifests in the beat, because that’s what the feeling is, that’s really how we translate those complexities into sound.
There are South Asian sonic textures scattered throughout the project, but they don’t feel like obvious references. When you were working with those sounds, was the intention to reference identity directly, or was it more about pulling texture? Also, how do you go about chopping your drum samples?
Jamal: The South Asian stuff comes from random videos we found online and decided to chop up. We weren’t like, “Let’s represent anything.” We just love sampling the weirdest shit. It’s more about the space those sounds come from—the feeling of them, not the literal meaning. A lot of it is chopped, time-stretched, granulated. Sometimes you wouldn’t even recognize it as South Asian unless you really knew. For us, it’s more like fragments of identity that we naturally gravitate to as creative expression. Hopefully it reads as vulnerability, not performance.
Also, we fuck around with drums and sound design a lot. Every drum sound has to have a purpose. We make our drums out of random stuff people wouldn’t think of. The other day we made a song where the drums were basically made out of a voicemail. You know the tone of a voicemail, when you save the file, it sounds hella shitty and weird. It sounds like it’s coming out of a tube that’s like five meters long and sounds watery. I chopped it up into whatever the transient sounds were and it sounded super fire. We just fuck around like that sonically.
There’s a recurring theme in what you’re saying about loneliness. Do you feel like making this project changed your relationship to that feeling
Jamal: Yeah. I think loneliness is a big thing for us. Growing up where we did, that environment was dark [laughs]. It makes you go inward. But the moment you start actually being yourself and exploring what you naturally gravitate towards, it becomes less heavy. You find your friends, people who fuck with you and believe in you. Things start feeling like they’re coming toward you instead of you chasing them.
There’s been a lot of buzz around your music lately. How has it been dealing with the industry? Has there ever been a moment where external industry input genuinely changed how you approached something?
Jamal: We’ve had conversations where people try to define what we are quite early on.
Omar: Like A&Rs or industry people trying to put a label on it.
Jamal: We once got invited to Abbey Road, and some A&R was there. They sent me a message after and they were like, “It was such an honor to witness the genius of The Twins at work.” I was like, this is so hilarious, we are idiots. What geniuses? We just made six TikTok sounds and called it a project [laughs]. Seriously though, I think people see us work and the fact is, how we communicate is really intuitive—without any words sometimes. Is that genius? We try not to get caught up in this stuff.
When you say “we’re just idiots,” it almost feels like there’s humor being used as a defense mechanism, but as a way of protecting something quite serious underneath.
Jamal: Even our songs that feel like jokes have something really personal in them, like the track “Fam.” That one is super personal but it’s also exactly what you were saying, where it’s been distilled so hard. We’re laughing at ourselves, but we’re also kind of trusting that people will still get the emotional part of it.
What’s up with the sense of anonymity and internet myth-making on your socials? You guys hide visually in some ways.
Jamal: It’s not really a strategy, we just don’t feel the need to be fully visible all the time. At first, we started hiding our faces because we were trying to be cool, honestly, but now it’s become a part of the persona for sure.
Omar: The music carries the emotion anyway and we care a lot about our visual world, graphics, what we wear. We’re super hands on.
Jamal: We’re really anti-performance. We’re also just not the chronically online type. I think our fans get that about us.
In this fast consumption era, that’s such an anti-rush mindset.
Jamal: Yeah, because rushing is dead. We’ve seen people go crazy off moving too fast. It’s not even worth it. Our lives are lit right now. Like, we’re with our friends, making music we like. Why would we rush that? Also, we’re not overthinking it. We just made six songs we thought were hard.
Let’s talk about Asian Paper, which feels like a wider ecosystem of South Asian creatives, rather than a “collective” in a traditional sense. How does being around that environment affect your own creative process?
Jamal: It feels like being surrounded by friends who truly get you, each of us working on our own creative pursuits.
Omar: We met in creative circles, we started hanging out and over time it naturally turned into collaborations.
Jamal: Now we support one another in what we do, and there’s a shared sense of understanding that makes everything feel less isolating. It feels like we’re all coming up together. That’s basically what Asian Paper is, really. Everyone’s just building different corners of the same world.
We’ve seen people go crazy off moving too fast. It’s not even worth it. Our lives are lit right now. Like, we’re with our friends, making music we like. Why would we rush that? Also, we’re not overthinking it. We just made six songs we thought were hard.
Who are some artists or projects that have really impacted you musically?
Omar: For me, it’s this track “Catch It” by Test Icicles. That whole album, it’s just ahead of its time. Sonically, visually, everything. The vocalist Sam, his vocals are mad. They weren’t around long.
When was that album released?
Omar: 2005. Damn, that’s the year we were born.
Jamal: Mine’s kind of different. I’d say Training Day and Training Day 2 by Potter Payper. It’s hilarious but it’s not even about sounding like that. The energy and his creative choices kind of shaped how I think about sampling.
Given your videos are very fashion-heavy with attention to a cohesive visual language, do you both see yourselves exploring other creative fields beyond music?
Jamal: Yeah, 100%. Fashion’s always been there. Omar was literally cutting and sewing, making clothes. He made a whole suit at one point. Before music he was doing 3D design, making random stuff.
Omar: Making guns, bro.
Jamal: Yeah [laughs], he was making 3D guns on his computer before I indoctrinated him into music.
Omar: Yeah, it’s always been visual as well as sound. I wanted to be a stylist when I was younger, to do stuff with my hands and work with color.
Jamal: Long term, we could do this music thing for 10 years and go into other stuff: films, clothes, everything. I’ll direct films, he’ll make garments. We’ll do whatever we want.
What else are The Twins up to these days?
Omar: Jamal’s been meditating, and he drinks six raw eggs worth of protein a day, which is weird.
Jamal: Yeah [laughs], meditation is something everyone should try.
If there’s one message you’d want people—especially young brown creatives and listeners—to take away, what would that be?
Jamal: We don’t want brown kids to feel like they have to fit into anything. If anything, we want people to feel like they can just do whatever they want. Where you come from or your background is actually the biggest gift you have. People are always gonna try to label what you’re doing, but you don’t have to move like that. Be yourself and don’t overthink it.
We just hope our music gives people something. Not a fixed sense of identity, but maybe an interest in finding their own. We just want to share love, honestly. That’s it.