Any wreckhead who raves long enough eventually reaches the point where they’re too old to die young and the choice becomes whether to double down or finally clean up their act.
This is the dilemma facing Polly and Sophie Duniam, the UK rave scene’s most infamous twin sisters, in a chaotic new VICE documentary that captures their struggles to stay sober while playing bassline, gabber, and jungle to mashed deviants at free parties all over Europe.
For the last decade, the identical twins have earned themselves a hedonistic reputation and a black book full of bad influences while singing, rapping, and dancing as My Bad Sister. But as Sophie puts it “there’s only so much your body can take before it just starts rejecting everything, you basically start going downhill.”
Director Joe Magowan filmed the sisters for three years—starting with their very first “straight edge” shows and continuing through the pandemic when they were ostracized by friends and industry connections for their anti-lockdown views and the neighbor-enraging parties they held in their London flat (it’s fair to say they were no longer straight edge at this point).
And he followed them across Europe as they struggled to fight the temptation that comes with life as a touring musician. “No easy feat when you have songs about snorting ketamine and your fans gleefully offer you drugs mid-set,” Joe explains.
“Coincidentally, I’d just started my own journey into sobriety after many failed attempts, so their frustrations and struggles with this new challenge resonated with me.”
His film is an intimate portrait of Polly and Sophie, who have performed together since they were three and like to joke that they’re basically the British version of the Olsen twins—they say they even auditioned for Lindsay Lohan film The Parent Trap. They impressed enough to be cast in BBC children’s TV series Home Farm Twins before eventually leaving home at 16. Soon after, they started raving and going to free parties, where My Bad Sister was born.
In 2019, Joe caught them playing a set at “London’s wildest music venue,” The Birds Nest in Deptford, watching as they unleashed a “barrage of hyperactive rave bangers onto the beer-soaked crowd.”
After being invited to photograph their next show, a squat party at an abandoned office block in central London, Joe realized that he needed to make a film about the sisters.
“Free from the rules and regulations of a licensed venue, the pair were able to let loose and belch the full spectrum of their chaotic genius onto the intoxicated crowd,” Joe said. “It got so heated at one point, they actually had a physical fight on stage.”
“I knew at this point that photos alone would never do them justice. I’d never made a film before, but now I felt like I didn’t have a choice. I knew I had to try and bottle some of their immense energy and show it off to the world. I was obsessed.”
“Swapping ecstasy and speed for blueberries and hummus”
When Joe started filming, a well-known music manager had just told the sisters that they needed to get serious and do at least three months of touring sober if they wanted to take their careers to the next level. But then the pandemic hit, leading to a wave of canceled gigs.
After a series of controversial outbursts about lockdown measures, the sisters were dropped by their booking agents, finding solace in illegal raves in the English countryside.
“Their attitude towards lockdown was a challenge for me, as it didn’t align with my own views and I didn’t want the viewer to dislike them, so I initially tried to avoid it in the narrative,” Joe said. “However, I knew if I was going to tell their story truthfully, I’d have to tackle it head on.”
“The film captures a relationship between two sisters—their tensions and anxieties of being musicians reliant on the rave scene, and the toll it takes as they near the end of their youth,” he said. “The most difficult part of making this film was having to end it, and I hope I give the audience just a taste of the utter mayhem that is My Bad Sister.”
Watch the whole film now over at YouTube.
The post Watch: On the Road With UK Rave’s Most Infamous Twin Sisters as They Try to Not Get High appeared first on VICE.
