Holly Herndon - Movement
Label.........................: RVNG
Genre.........................: Electronic
StoreDate.....................: Nov-13-2012
Source........................: CDDA
Grabber.......................: Exact Audio Copy (Secure Mode)
Encoding Scheme...............: Lame 3.98.4 V0 VBR Joint-Stereo
Size..........................: 64.31 MB
Total Playing Time............: 35:01
Release Notes:
This Promo has no covers. Grouptag has been added to proof.
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In a recent interview with the British magazine FACT, Holly Herndon
refuted the trope that electronic music is the stuff of impersonal and
inhuman androids. The Tennessee native bought into that narrative
herself while living in the electronic hub of Berlin, where, though she
played with a band named Electrocute, she began taking contrabass
lessons. Her hope was that if she could master a "real instrument," she
might, one day, be taken seriously as a composer. But after returning
stateside to study at the electronic sanctum of California's Mills
College, she realized that her laptop-- a web of code and a fountain of
sound-- could make music as personal, intimate, and important as that of
any ensemble. "This is actually the most interesting instrument for me,"
she told FACT. "I also think that it's the most personal instrument that
the world has ever seen."
Many people might balk at that idea, that a computer is somehow a more
personal instrument than the customary acoustic toolset of music. After
all, how can a box of wires, circuits, and chips connected to a screen
and controlled by fingers be more individual than a guitar, with its
strings simply pressed by fingers, or, better yet, the human voice, the
sound of someone simply singing? But, to an extent, computers are
forever malleable, able to be programmed and reprogrammed to fit needs
and whims and, in turn, to alter those old modes of expression in ways
that they couldn't do themselves. On her proper full-length debut
Movement, the California-based composer uses her crystalline voice as a
chief input for her laptop, ultimately arriving at a poignant nexus of
electronic accessibility and experimentation that owes as much to her
academic forebears as her club contemporaries. It's a record with the
rare capacity to turn cynics who might scoff at the idea of
laptops-as-intimate-instruments into believers.
It seems overly convenient and coincidental to compare Herndon's
Movement to Laurel Halo's Quarantine. Here are, after all, two American
women releasing records in the same year that weave their respective
voices into intricate electronic music that sits at the borders of pop,
dance, and more esoteric forms. The links are reductive enough to be
insulting. But both Movement and Quarantine are bold records, dependent
upon a multiplicity of voices from one source to press against borders
of populist versus experimental media-- or, better yet, to unite them.
At times, both Halo and Herndon seem like would-be popular sirens, ready
to deliver hooks to the radio; at other points, however, they seem
destined for careers of gigs in small art spaces or extended fellowships
at universities. But at their best, they seem like both and neither,
composers and thinkers unafraid to elide convention, circumvent
categorization and arrive, fully formed, at an intersection of things
often thought to be mutually exclusive.
Movement's humanity stems in part from its variety of moods. At times
overtly playful and slyly sexual, decidedly monastic and obviously
extroverted, these seven pieces skip between feelings with a
true-to-life mercurialness and unpredictability. Herndon's sonics are
impressive; see the subdural bass moans of opener "Terminal" or the
careful, Oval-like slices of "Control And" for proof. But she never
betrays the soul of her music for the sound of it. During "Breathe", for
instance, Herndon takes a series of deep breaths and scrambles the
patterns of inhalation and exhalation. She splits the actions across the
channels, conjuring an unlikely choir of dissonance and consonance.
Sonically, it's impressive enough, but emotionally, it portrays the
struggle to rise above the world's din, to stay centered in a bustle of
hyperactivity. It's electronic Zen: Herndon successfully links an
electroacoustic premise to a pragmatic observation.
Especially considering that this is her first LP, Herndon's ability to
steer music that's simultaneously complex and approachable is
astounding: "Fade", for instance, should lure fans of the Knife with its
iterative keyboards and sticky arctic hook, but the structure-- or, more
specifically, the way Herndon handles the beat in relation to her
voice-- is a marvel all its own. Herndon frames the rhythm with her
voice, syllables darting between its cracks like water washing through
rivulets. But that's just the most superficial layer of Herndon's voice.
Underneath the hook, samples of her singing crisscross beneath the beat,
supplying counterrhythms and serving like little magnets that draw the
listener deeper into the song with each pass. It's a perfect interface
of machine and user and of intricate composition with irrepressible
songcraft. Likewise, though the noisy 64-second track "Interlude" might
seem ostracizing at first, it plays out like a miniature video game of
voices. Herndon manipulates her own tone into blips and volleys that
clash with one another in their own electronic Mortal Kombat. It's
quixotic, a dose of levity in a field not known for it.
"Dilato", the brilliant closer, is the only track that doesn't key on
HerndonÆs voice. Instead, she samples and stretches the patient
intonations of classical baritone Bruce Rameker, pulling his syllables
until they turn into a brooding, wordless chorus. The piece is
Movement's most unapologetically academic; it treats speech with such
force that it recalls Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room, in which
the composer repeatedly played back and recorded a tape of himself
reading text in a room until his speech hummed into howling oblivion.
But listen closely for Herndon's own voice, which joins Rameker's most
notably just before the three-minute mark. She harmonizes with him for a
moment, singing one syllable with an operatic grandeur. It's over in an
instant, but it's enough to reiterate Herndon's symbiotic thesis and to
make "Dilato" feel like much more than a rote exercise in bending one
person's voice into phantasmagorias.
Appropriately named, Movement feels like a progression and challenge
from one of the year's most exciting new voices, producers, and
composers. It's an invitation by example to move in several circles at
once and emerge with something thatÆs brazen, fresh, and entirely
individual.
-- 8.1/10 Pitchfork
Tracklisting
01. Terminal 8:15
02. Fade 6:28
03. Breathe 5:59
04. Control And 2:00
05. Movement 4:53
06. Interlude 1:03
07. Dilato 6:23
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