Bitte Orca is hard to get a handle on - at once ragged and ornate (crystalline, even), it comes on like genuine art-pop, the 'art' as crucial as the 'pop', and as such, it's perhaps not surprising that the closest analogue to the music on this record that I can find is Talking Heads' (oddly, also the nearest reference point that I came up with for another towering 00's record, Funeral, at the time it came out - an indication, perhaps, of Byrne & co's lasting influence or at least massively-ahead-of-the-curveness).
I've listened to Bitte Orca a lot over the last month or two; I don't think it's a great album, but there's something a bit special about it, particularly in the heights it reaches (most notably clear highlight "Stillness Is The Move", which is flat out great). It's never less than interesting - and at its best, it gives me a feeling that only music and (tellingly) abstract art can, a sense that parts of me are being stretched and dragged upwards and outwards, a kind of heightening.
