Hamerkop is a pair of Baltimore-based sound
nerds: Annabel Alpers, the composer, singer and
instrumentalist formerly of New Zealands Bachelorette, and Adam Cooke, a Baltimorean drummer/audio engineer with credits that include Beach
House, Wye Oak and Future Islands. Together,
they have created a song-cycle that contrasts the
often-mundane (yet often satisfying) everyday world
with that of the idealized, longed-for fantasy, to
find the spaces in between these things, the place
where we all feel good about our existence.
Hamerkops debut, Remote, started as an exploration of the sonic beauty in Alpers collection
of field recordings from her homeland and travels
around the world. Looped and sampled, they became a set of instrumental sounds of
their own, and when played live in a multiple-speaker, surround-sound experience, their
effect was transporting. The finished album blends these expansive sounds in choral
layers of synths and vocals, with a kaleidoscopic, almost psychedelic quality, all of it
anchored by Cookes 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 away
from her native New Zealand with a new life and family in America, Annabel strove to
find elements of her old identity in new environs, building songs out of sonic scraps
from remote places, as if she were sewing a blanket in which to wrap them all. As she
puts it, Home for me is in two places, and its been causing a lot of creative tension
because I wish I could be in both places at once.
The songs of Remote find depth and dimension via a rich tapestry of voices, found
sounds and classic pop melodies, as constant synapse triggering from unexpected
angles and algorithms reveals, by chance and design, a magical inner life scored by
birds and babies, church bells and bonfires. Genre-defying, yet familiar, Hamerkop
translates the topography that stretches out between us into a musical language that
celebrates our shared places.
The sound of Hamerkop is multi-layered, changing as it revolves. Its the sound made
by two people, but it could be all of us.

1. Egg 2. We Can Wing 3. The Splendour That Was Rome 4. Remote 5. Deadwood 6. Polisher 7. Mourning Bells 8. T.I.N.Y. 9. Lull 10. Patience

• Format Detail: 12" Vinyl inner sleeve
• Format: Vinyl
• Genre: Rock

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