ANIMAL HANDS | VINYL RECORD (LP)

LP version. Includes download code. Animal Hands is the collaborative venture of two close friends, Will Samson (Fenster) and Heimer. As the duo had worked closely together as mutual producers on Samson's solo releases Balance (KK 069 CD/LP, 2012) and Light Shadows (KK 077EP, 2014), it was natural that a joint musical project would eventually materialize. However, in comparison with these two preceding records, this new body of truly collaborative work takes a different direction into more electronic-inspired sounds. The project first appeared in the form of Beacon Island, a track that arose suddenly and organically during a weekend of email exchanges between Oxfordshire, England, and Berlin, Germany, in autumn 2013. Excited and surprised by the spontaneity of the song's fruition, the pair played with the notion of expanding the project into a full record and continued to casually exchange sketches and ideas, such as guitar loops, vocal melodies, and field recordings. Meanwhile, their debut track made it's way to the ears of Will Saul (whom Samson had met after producing It Grows Again with Tom Demac, released on Saul's label, Aus Music, in 2013 (AUS 1353EP)), and Saul included the track on his 2014 DJ-Kicks mix CD for !K7 Records. It was after a string of tours (including shows with Marissa Nadler, Kurt Vile, Hauschka, Do Make Say Think, Olafur Arnalds, and more), that Samson temporarily relocated to Heimer's native city of Berlin, enabling them to ditch the tedious file-sharing method of work for the immediacy of true communion in the studio. It was here where they began meticulously compiling and experimenting with new ideas that, over the course of year, eventually grew into this nine-track album, Samson's third full-length. Each piece of music took on many different shapes and went through twists and turns during this time, including the previously unplanned addition of live drums. Many early sketches that had been abandoned were reinvestigated, then sampled, processed, and/or reworked, interlacing their way back into the threads of the record. The resulting album is one that strikes a dynamic balance between the immediate and the intricate.