arms around the world

BIOGRAPHY

The debut full-length recording from Seattle’s arms around the world blooms from the intersection of power-pop classicism, post-rock atmospherics, and golden-age alternative melodicism. Lush, loud, tuneful, the self-titled album offers eminently engaging and unapologetically hooky music, wrapped in distortion and charm. The vision—and sole creation—of Jon Rimmerman, arms around the world (Shy Sounds) is one of the rare records where the production and tone are held in equal esteem with the underlying songwriting. Melding experimental recording techniques and a highly refined sonic palate, arms around the world is a deeply textured and absolutely visceral listen.

Jon Rimmerman grew up between Chicago and Wisconsin—the grandson of a 1920s jazz singer and the son of a literature scholar—absorbing language, rhythm, and storytelling before he ever picked up a bass in high school. After graduating from DePaul Law School, he landed in Seattle during the mid-90s grunge and internet boom, where a deep curiosity about people and a taste for risk evolved organically into a business. In 1995 he founded the curation-focused retailer Garagiste out of a temperature-controlled garage. With no investors, no advertising, and just one email at a time, Rimmerman redefined the process of wine discovery for a new generation.

Over the next two decades, he became a defining voice in the boutique wine world. Rimmerman champions micro-producers, using sensory, place-based writing to connect readers to remarkable wines. He gives people stories—makers, processes, traditions—rather than scores or numbers. That same framework (context shapes content; invisible connections drive expression) anchors his music. Based between Seattle and Paris with his partner and their daughters, Rimmerman continues to build the spiderweb: a cross-continental world of creators, stories, and sound.

Upon consideration, it makes a certain sense that Rimmerman’s main gig is discovering and describing wine. With wine, he uses highly personal, opinionated, idealistic, concrete language to reveal the invisible connections that shape the final product. With arms around the world, he uses sound and recording choices to paint those same forces in music, creating a soundscape where analog warmth meets diamond-tipped clarity, and layered guitar interplay dances around melodic hooks.

Last year, in a now-or-never moment, Rimmerman showed up at Hidden City Studios in Santa Barbara and persuaded Grammy-nominated producer Elliott Lanam (Katy Perry, Depeche Mode) to record arms around the world. Playing every instrument across two weeks of recording, capturing experiments—placing a mic inside a hollow body Rickenbacker 330 while running the sound through two, three, sometimes four tube amps simultaneously. One track was first laid down in a California motel room with a 1964 Super Reverb amp, one mic, and an overturned wastebasket as a hi-hat.

Wine and music both represent the guiding hand of the muse. Grapes and soil. Wood and wire. They reflect the inherent qualities of source materials and the expression of their creator in equal measure.  “Everything is connected—wine, food, music; one thread,” says Rimmerman. arms around the world offers its own terroir of tone and culture, powered by the very human drive to tell stories that make us feel more alive.

listen and see.

CONTACT

Ever Kipp
ever@bighassle.com