Animal Hands doesn’t mark the first time that atmospheric dreamscape deviser Will Samson had come together with Berlin-going composition production wiz Heimer, but it does mark the first time that the two have dedicated such an amount of time to their ongoing collaboration that they’ve developed a full album from out of it. It began like a modern romance novel this side of John Green, with Animal Hands track “Beacon Island” coming out of the mental woodwork between the two artists after a couple of days’ worth of exchanged emails had lead into its fruition. The result of their latest coming together is an absolute melding of two separate artistic minds, debuting the full breadth of Samson and Heimer’s potential in the moment with an excellent flush at the hand.
The output comes across as calculatedly organic, with opening track “Your Golden Glow” developing something mesmerizing from out of the ether between depth-full layers of instrumental inundation. The general feeling continues on from there throughout Animal Hands with a gentle, intrinsic radiance that shines in its ability to simultaneously emanate a careful, brooding tone with something much more raw and animalistic.