HAERTS might just be your new favourite alternative band
By Patrick Cash
Hemiplegia opens with an oscillating, orange-golden synth line that swings and eddies as Nini Fabi’s pure cut-glass vocals croon over the top: ‘Slow, slow, slow / Wade through water…’ An atmospheric start to a track that instigates the exciting tingle of anticipation, and sure enough when the drums kick in, the listener is swept along with the build. ‘I cannot fight the sleep is droning / Into the motion, into the night / Is it the glow that keeps you moving / Hemiplegia holds you tight.’
Hemiplegia, for all those like me who didn’t previously know, is a paralysis of the arm, leg and trunk on the same side of the body, which can induce difficulty with gait and balance. As this epic, layered music cleverly coasts and cruises through the ear, one begins to understand an instance of what Fabi sings. ‘Gold for gold, burns our ocean,’ she purrs, before she reaches the epic crescendo where she cries: ‘now you can’t move up with your eyes down.’ For me, this indicates how the world around them, as Haerts see it, is in a stranglehold of money, forgetting their emotional truth in a hemiplegia of purchase homogeny.
HAERTS were formed in Brooklyn, New York, but boast members hailing from Germany and the UK as well as the US. As they say on their website ‘there is something decidedly mystical about HAERTS’ story and it’s reflected in their sound.’ This is not a mysticism that is wreathed in esoteric opaqueness though, but rather a warm, inviting mystique that coils and embraces. They released their first EP ‘Hemiplegia’ last year and, although there are no current plans to visit the UK, we can but hope it will happen soon!
