Hamerkop - Remote

Hamerkop is a pair of Baltimore-based soundnerds: Annabel Alpers, the composer, singer andinstrumentalist formerly of New Zealand's Bachelorette, and Adam Cooke, a Baltimorean drummer/audio engineer with credits that include BeachHouse, Wye Oak and Future Islands. Together,they have created a song-cycle that contrasts theoften-mundane (yet often satisfying) everyday worldwith that of the idealized, longed-for fantasy, tofind the spaces in between these things, the placewhere we all feel good about our existence.Hamerkop's debut, Remote, started as an exploration of the sonic beauty in Alpers' collectionof field recordings from her homeland and travelsaround the world. Looped and sampled, they became a set of instrumental sounds oftheir own, and when played live in a multiple-speaker, surround-sound experience, theireffect was transporting. The finished album blends these expansive sounds in chorallayers of synths and vocals, with a kaleidoscopic, almost psychedelic quality, all of itanchored by Cooke's Kraut-minimal drumming.Remote is a natural progression from the criminally-underrated Bachelorette catalog-seeking catharsis through the contextualizing of personal texts into lush songscapes,using the chill of synth-pop to mask the fallible human soul hidden behind it. Far awayfrom her native New Zealand with a new life and family in America, Annabel strove tofind elements of her old identity in new environs, building songs out of sonic scrapsfrom remote places, as if she were sewing a blanket in which to wrap them all. As sheputs it, "Home for me is in two places, and it's been causing a lot of creative tensionbecause I wish I could be in both places at once."The songs of Remote find depth and dimension via a rich tapestry of voices, foundsounds and classic pop melodies, as constant synapse triggering from unexpectedangles and algorithms reveals, by chance and design, a magical inner life scored bybirds and babies, church bells and bonfires. Genre-defying, yet familiar, Hamerkoptranslates the topography that stretches out between us into a musical language thatcelebrates our shared places.The sound of Hamerkop is multi-layered, changing as it revolves. It's the sound madeby two people, but it could be all of us.1. Egg2. We Can Wing3. The Splendour That Was Rome4. Remote5. Deadwood6. Polisher7. Mourning Bells8. T.I.N.Y. 9. Lull10. Patience