Arms and Sleepers – Swim Team (Fake Chapter)

Boston electronic duo Max Lewis and Mirza Ramic have been a prolific partnership over the nearly ten years they’ve been together as A&S. Counting a few self-released albums and a remix LP, Swim Team is their seventh full-length since 2007, to go with a myriad of EPs and singles. Yet it’s their first one since 2011’s The Organ Hearts, following a brief hiatus while both pursued Master’s degrees. According to their bio, Swim “[builds] on the ambient sound of their previous work while taking their music in a fundamentally new direction.” Indeed, while their past music was more concentrated on quieter styles like ambient, dreampop, and even classical and jazz, with trip-hop elements peppered in, Swim finds warm, crackling hip-hop beats dominating on every track. As well, it’s more focused than previous LPs, with its relaxed, moderately-tempoed rhythms remaining consistent and unswerving throughout. Ironically, despite their music being primarily instrumental (an exception is 2009’s Matador, which employed guest vocalists), one of Swim’s best features are the samples of soothing male/female vocals, which are clipped and stitched together like origami. Imagine repetitive loops of Elizabeth Fraser’s comforting cooing with The Cocteau Twins: you might not be able to understand specific words, but they’re heavenly and hypnotic nonetheless.

While the LP’s laid-back, chilled grooves don’t vary much in tempo, Lewis and Ramic fill each song with so many elaborate, engaging sounds, they’ll send your eardrums into spasmodic fits of ecstasy. On the standout, Eastern-influenced title track, the hiccupping, Fraser-evoking female vocals hover happily amid shuffling, static-speckled beats, samples of frolicking children, plucked percussion, tinkling keys, and twangy acoustic (don’t miss the song’s accompanying video, which documents home video-mugging brothers Joseph and Malek Ghaleb as they reunite 17 years later for a sentimental – and stealthy – swim in their childhood pool). Elsewhere, “Hummingbird” combines an off-kilter keyboard with hammer-on-nail, chain-dragging clanky beats and loopy, lulling female vocals; “Tiger Tempo” merges shimmery, spacious synths and a shuddering voice (which sounds strangely like someone suppressing a sneeze) over a horsetrot-like clomp; “Ghost Loop” suggests a softly-spraying lawn sprinkler spinning above tranquil, Vince Guaraldi-esque jazzy piano tones and a male’s tentative trilling; and “Hurry Slowly” blends a dreamy diva’s seductive serenading with prickly, percolating pulsations and expansive, effervescent effects. Finally, the opening “Unbound” and the closing “Tetro” bookend the album with an ‘80s new wave influence, both fueled by wheezy yet dramatic synths. Unlike my own embarrassingly forgettable experience on my high school swim team (we finished 0-24 during my two years on it!), A&S’s Swim Team is one worth bragging about. (fakechapter.com, wearearmsandsleepers.bandcamp.com)

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