Artist Profile: Fantastic Twins

Fantastic Twins, the solo project of Julienne Dessagne, moves through experimental pop and the outer zones of electronica with a dedication something close to grace. On Friday, May 15, 2026, Control Club hosts Dessagne's live vocal layering and contemporary kosmische psychedelia in Bucharest, shortly after the release of her new EP for Kompakt's long-running series, Speicher 139.

Before the twin, there was the duo. Dessagne first moved through Europe as half of Saschienne with Sascha Funke, releasing on Kompakt. Who Let The Twins Out? arrived in 2013. You've Got A Twin In The Attic (You Lunatic) followed a year later, sounding in its title alone like a note passed under a locked bedroom door.

That unease was walking by The New You, released on Hippie Dance in 2017. Obakodomo then opened an even colder room that same year. What began as music for a contemporary dance work for children, the Optimo Music release's emotional temperature sat closer to glacial sci-fi. Dessagne shaped everything through an Antarctic palette, using icy timbres and suspended space to make movement feel stranded, feel watched.

Lost In Germany, released in 2019 through Optimo's Against Fascism Trax imprint, carried her political instinct into the catalogue. Pina Bausch partly inspired the EP. Label profits went to Hope Not Hate.

On the album Two Is Not A Number, released on House of Slessor in 2023, the emotional entanglements of imaginary twins move like a family romance plugging in and out of a modular synth. DJ Mag named the record among its albums of that year.

House of Slessor gave that grammar its own imprint. Dessagne launched the label with 46cm Hole In Her Cell, an EP drawn from live experimentation and Fantastic Twins live-session material, then used it to carry Two Is Not A Number and Suite of Rooms.

Suite of Rooms, released in 2025, grew from Dessagne's composition for Sara Pasquier's contemporary dance work for young audiences, Méandres. Theseus and the Minotaur is the source, though the album treats the mythic labyrinth more as a psychological construct on the journey of man.

Speicher 139 puts Fantastic Twins inside one of Kompakt's longest-running techno institutions. Michael Mayer has framed it as the Fantastic Twins techno EP he had wanted for the label. Acid curls through the tracks, rhythm hardens, and the voice hovers like a signal arriving through the wrong side of glass.

Dessagne composes for contemporary dance, and Suite of Rooms carries that practice directly into the discography. Her music has surfaced in fashion contexts for Dior and Acne Studios. Fantastic Twins has played Berghain, fabric, Robert Johnson, and Houghton, as well as at Arte Concert events and on tour with Bicep.

NTS, Rinse FM, Dublab and Crack Magazine have all hosted her selections. On NTS, she moves through experimental pressure and shadowy pop. The Rinse FM Optimo takeover connects her to the label behind the early records. Richard Fearless brought her onto Dublab's Metal Box, where Dopplereffekt and Caterina Barbieri sat alongside her own productions. Crack Magazine's Sunday Mix revealed a hallucinatory selector, both devotional and restless.

This May, Fantastic Twins arrives at a moment when the project feels harder and stranger than ever, with Speicher 139 the sharpest signal yet.