We’ve kept a watchful eye on Arms and Sleepers over the past couple months, eagerly awaiting their 17th (yes, 17th) album, Swim Team, and, as expected, it’s up to the brim with chillwave goodness, featuring eleven alleviating instrumentals embedded with zestful, unrepeated nuances. We’ve already underlined three pieces from the album in "Swim Team", "Hurry Slowly", and "Tiger Tempo", and here, we’ve decided to focus on a few more, one being the introductory track “Unbound”, and the other, a piece entitled “Nobody More Than You”. Max and Mirza (Arms and Sleepers) certainly picked the right piece to launch this album with, as “Unbound” slowly soars in both temperament and complexity. A delightfully offbeat drum pattern, emphatic synth buildups, and scraping shakers kick off and trigger an immersive setting, only to be accompanied by an unorthodox vocal cut and layers of metamorphosing sounds to fabricate an appropriately enticing character till the end. “Nobody More Than You" is another sonically vivid piece, and on it, the duo illuminates a gorgeously pitched sample by employing a miscellany of chiming percussion and intricately layered drums. The piece might come off as mundane to some, but don’t be fooled by the veneer coating, as there’s inclusions at times you wouldn’t expect placed niftily in distinct sections of the track. The album as a whole is an escapade through head-nodding, ingenious drum patterns, an endless supply of arpeggiating synths, and exquisitely sampled vocal cuts—making it quite an exceptional listen for anyone who appreciates electronic dexterity. Get familiar with our favorites below before checking out the album's whole, and once you're ready to do that, head over to their Soundcloud.
Arms and Sleepers