The Standing Stones — the project of Jimmy Cauty and Jem Finer — are set to release their second 12″ single, Twa Sisters, via L-13 Light Industrial Recordings, with a record release and stone standing ceremony planned for 1st May 2026 at the Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking as part of NeoAncients Festival in Stroud.
The track is sung by Iona Zajac — described by KLOF Mag’s Thomas Blake as “a songwriter with important things to say and a willingness to say them loudly and with a laser-like focus.” She dropped her debut album Bang in 2025, one of KLOF Mag’s Albums of the Year. She is accompanied by Daragh Lynch (of Lankum) on guitar and OP-1 synth, Finer on hurdy-gurdy, and Cauty on radio news bulletins, mixed from his mountain-top facility The Big Omaha. At over eleven minutes, Twa Sisters unfolds across three interconnecting episodes, the narrative waxing and waning as the story demands (a preview of the track is released today – listen below).
It’s a fitting vessel for one of the oldest and darkest songs in the British folk tradition. A tale of jealousy, murder, and mystical transformation — in which a drowned woman’s body is fashioned into a harp that sings her story — Twa Sisters exists in variants dating back nearly 400 years, first appearing in print in 1656 and later catalogued as Child Ballad 10.
In their hands, its nineteen verses become what the band calls a “hyper-quantised dystopio-folk-horror soundscape,” blurring the ancient origins of the song with an unsettling near future — a mode established on their debut sibling recording of Twa Brothers featuring Alasdair Roberts, which also opened our KLOF Mixtape No. 35.
As with that first release, the band are spending their £2,000 label advance on a standing stone. The Hurdy Stone — 2.5 tonnes of solid Welsh slate, twelve feet high — will be stood in the ground and encoded with the track using the newly developed LunaTronix transducer encoding system as the Flower Moon rises on the night of 1st May. It joins The Gurdy Stone, which was encoded with the Hurdy-Gurdy Song in 2023 and now stands permanently in a field on Lovebrook Farm, Sussex. The two stones, along with a third yet to come, are set to triangulate with the Green Comet when it next passes Earth — in 49,997 years.
The Hurdy Stone will remain accessible year-round at Hawkwood, which the band suggest is best encountered under a full moon.
Twa Sisters will be released as a limited edition one-sided 12″ with the song’s lyrics etched in a spiral on the B side. A track preview and record presale launch on 2nd March 2026 via L-13.org and L-13 Light Industrial Recordings on Bandcamp. A specially commissioned short film and track remix by Cauty premieres at St Laurence Church, Stroud, on 3rd May, with a further screening and Q&A at Rough Trade East, London, on 12th May. From 5th June to 13th September 2026, Twa Sisters Sound & Vision will feature in the Saatchi Gallery exhibition The Sun and The Moon: Art Inspired by the Celestial.
Upcoming Dates
1st May 2026 – Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking & NeoAncients Festival, Stroud – STONE STANDING CEREMONY & RECORD RELEASE in a field under the rising Flower Moon.
3rd May 2026 – NeoAncients Festival, St Laurence Church, Stroud – TWA SISTERS SOUND & VISION PREMIERE. First play of a specially commissioned short film & track remix by Jimmy Cauty.
4th May 2026 – Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking, Stroud. THE STANDING STONES IN CONVERSATION with Matthew Shaw of Stone Club, for Hawkwood May Day event.
12th May 2026 – Rough Trade East, London. TWA SISTERS SOUND & VISION SCREENING Followed by Q&A and record signing with Jimmy Cauty & Jem Finer.
5th June – 13th September 2026 – Saatchi Gallery, London. TWA SISTERS SOUND & VISION featured in the exhibition The Sun and The Moon: Art Inspired by the Celestial.