Arms And Sleepers: The Organ Hearts

This album is an entity of bliss… I dislike even mentioning the fact that this is not your standard trip-hop album for the reason that it is far from such. It’s a classic and I think possibly a pre-curssour for some sort of wave in the transgression of what trip-hop will become in the future. Though extremely ambient, but not so much so that it overbears the listen-ability of it. It keeps a graciously catchy groove from the drums that never seems to dull the euphoric and melancholic effects of the ambiance. There are all sorts of variations in these songs, I hear influence of jazz in much of it, I hear the song-writer influence of The Beatles especially in the structure of the music and its arrangements. There seems to be a very minimal song-structure and an immersed emphasis on atmosphere on each track; however, over the few structures that appear in each song, one can hear a new sound within it that seems to fluctuate between hooky electro-percussive sounds and subtly vibrant over-tones, with all sorts of things of this nature that seem to change after so many measure of each structure.

Most albums of this genre are usually not the most listenable albums as a whole due the tendency of over-repetition. This particular beatific collage of sound, I would rank with the likes of classic albums of artists who are considered pioneers or their genres such as Portishead, Tricky, DJ Krush, etc. It has a track flow through the album that’s idealistic to the peace and easiness of the flow of a stream that one would envision in a Zen fable. There are sort of transitional tracks, interludes so to speak, such as “The Afternoon Child” which invokes a mood that feels as a steady putrefaction of daily stress and the burdens of the wicked world. It seems to replenishes the deepest part of yourself with the exact form of relief that you need at that particular moment in time and I actually feel like the previously described emotions are quite frequent all through the entirety of the album. In the song “I Sing The Body Electric,” (named after the nineteenth poem in Walt Whitman’s famous “Leaves Of Grass” poetry collection) one of the most revitalising songs on the record, has a sort of dual male/female vocal duet that starts off with lyrics then just sort of carries along with the music with cotton-soft vocal tracks that can be trace back the jazz “scat.” “Reprise” is the jazziest track of them all on here and funny thing is, it sounds as if the melody is reprising itself. I have to say, pure and simply, “Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye”, is one of the most ardent songs I have ever heard.

This is an amazing album. As far as trip-hop goes, which I am a huge fan of, I give it a nine out of ten point review. This is an album that will strike you with joy in your darkest forms of time, it will bring joy when you’re already full of it and make everything not just seem, but be as beautiful as the album is itself. It’s the kind of music that a couple with avid passion and ardor would listen to whilst making love. It’s an intensely ecstatic album and if you purchase it you’re not only purchasing a piece of plastic that contains these glorious sounds, but a gateway to peace. It can be purchased at the band’s . Enough said.