Holly Herndon albums

2015

Platform – 65%

Holly Herndon’s second record is her first foray into writing songs using a computer as her muse and guide. The songs are snippets of vocals and drum patterns some times randomly placed, but made into things that make sense based off of what ethereal singer songwriters have done before her like Sade or even Kate Bush, but more in a glitchy computerized way like Bjork or The Books. “Morning Sun” is a successful iteration of this, as the friendly melody soars but the patterns behind it are hardly drums and more like programs or Artificial Intelligence come to life, and its beautiful. Opener “Interface” is similar in the way it creates this computerized form of music. It’s about half hit half miss on this album though, as many ideas don’t really come to fruition: “Locker Leak” is too artificial, a longer more boring version of Radiohead’s “Fitter Happier”; “Lonely At the Top” is a mere whisper of a song; “Home is far too long and meandering for what it has to say. If Herndon can take her best ideas and move forward she will have a success on her hands, her use of computerized vocals and programing of structure is at times a wonder to behold.

Best Songs: Interface, Morning Sun, An Exit

2019

PROTO – 97%

I love the human voice, as a singer and general fan of music it is truly my favorite instrument. You will read a lot of reviews pointed to the technological significance of this album, but why Herndon's latest record is so important has to do mainly with the music present. The blend of the A.I. machine used (codenamed Spawn) to improvise and create vocals flow with the old-fashioned use of chorales and layered vocal technique. In a huge way, Herndon takes everything we have learned so far with the glitch music genre and weaves it to a version of noise rock pioneered by so many others. Think of it as a combination of My Bloody Valentine's 1991 album Loveless meets Solex's 2004 album The Laughing Stock of Indie Rock. If that doesn't quite make sense to you, don't let it stop you- this album is the best of 2019 and worth seeking out.

Songs such as "Eternal" and "Alienation" not only sum up a deep yearning and feeling of wonder but also contain melodies hidden under layers of sound effects. "Godmother" is everything I could want in a more experimental type of music, as she is talking/chanting/singing her way through some sort of digital murky atmosphere. Even the song titles like "Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt" and "Crawler" adhere to a sort of formula like a blending of machinery to the universal language of music. "Last Gasp" is a doom laden album closer, a la "The Overload" from Talking Heads 1980 masterwork Remain in Light.

However, the album is not a one trick pony or a kind of quirky experiment. The songs THEMSELVES are meaningful and amazing to hear. The album is actually rather old fashioned, building on the noise rock experimenters of old and creating a whole new language that is post-industrial music, but also post-noise rock. In a way, Herndon makes "music" a whole different entity, and the entity is speaking to us from a new consciousness. It is very important not to get bogged down about how ambitious and forward thinking this album is, but to just appreciate it for how lovely and timeless it already sounds. Herndon dares to dream about creating music that is different and completely unique, and she succeeds brilliantly on this record.

Best Songs: Eternal, Last Gasp, Godmother, Crawler