Julia Holter

New album imminent and streaming here. Probably about time for her own thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM-WnjqB8EY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QukVgY8I_nA

Have listened to this a couple of times this morning now and WOW JUST WOW

Amateur hour.

absolutely loved "Tragedy", but those 2 youtubes aren't doing it for me on first impression

Ha well, I was very much on the fence with Tragedy so there you go. Something kind of Broadcast-ish about the new one to my ears, that same otherworldly-ness recaptured.

weird, coz i'd say Tragedy was definitely Broadcast-ish, and that seems to be largely missing from those two songs above

This one is a lot more song-based but still uses the same special spectral glue that kept the last one together.

hmmm, guess i'll have to wait till i hear the rest of it then

Just starting to listen to the album stream. I like the composition of this first one - I won't mind too much if it's the ambient stuff that gets lost in the wash, as I felt like that was the least interesting thing about her. I'm more interested in seeing where she goes with the classical/operatic influences in a pop sphere...

ah see i loved the found sound ambient stuff, "The Falling Age" was one of my favourite tracks last year, had an amazing David Lynch/Ligeti creepiness to it

There are definitely a couple of tracks with a Broadcast-esque phrasing in here, but really, I'd say it sounds more like someone who has similar influences to Broadcast than someone who is indebted to them. There's more Laurie Anderson, y'know.

Yeah, I wouldn't disagree at all, I was just struck by the similarity which had only just occurred to me.

Okay, there's a 'Goddess Eyes' reprise type track on here? Not feeling it as much as the version on Tragedy. I was agonising for ages over what the vocoder bits of that reminded me of, by the way, and the answer is 'Amory Blaine' by John Sims.

FACT "Mix" is great// mainly field recordings of pop radio, says something to me about the comfort and/or loneliness of the FM space

http://www.factmag.com/2012/02/13/fact-mix-316-julia-holter/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq2S-2VpdDk

^ this is great too btw - Julia Holter with Linda Perhacs, whose influence you can definitely hear in Holter's work.

nite jewel on keys
JH plays on her rec also
end of public service announcement

(psyched for this rec because i always liked 'in the same room' more than any of JH's shortform stuff, really)

oh right, i never knew that!

this slays tho
http://vimeo.com/10725439
xp

"Goddess Eyes II" is the biggest curveball for sure, not 100% convinced by its dubby radio pop metamorphosis. On the whole the album feels less unique than Tragedy at this point in time, she seems to be mining very zeitgeisty influences rather than striking out in her own soundworld. Still a very good album though!

listened to the stream now & thankfully them 2 videos definitely aren't representative, plenty here that i like, esp "In The Same Room" & "Fur Felix"
had no idea Linda Perhacs was playing live dates!

Why sing when you can't sing? Why make the same "half an hour with a synth=a pop arrangement" crap as every other nobody? Marks of brilliance these are not. Things have changed since The Zombies were about.

Those are interesting questions, which I'd be interested in discussing further. Perhaps you should start a thread about them, though, because they're not really relevant here.

Perhacs comparison otm, tho also I hear some Charming Hostess kinda avant-gardey Meredith Monk too. Almost kinda wish it was more Perhacs-esque; i love that sublime quietness in her voice. Ekstasis gets a little busy sometimes...

emil.y otm, i will derail this thread into the ground if someone is seriously pressing "Why sing when you can't sing?"

I just think you good young people should be pushing for better.

I hadn't really thought of the Perhacs comparison before, but yes, it definitely fits. Monk is a weird one, in that I don't associate the *sound* with anything of Monk's I've heard, but I would eat my hat if Holter wasn't a fan.

not really comparable, but while i'm listening to the album i can't help but think i'd rather be listening to the karen dalton album...

Between this, Grimes, and Frankie Rose, it seems that Pitchfork is on an 80s 4AD revival kick or something.

Wait what there's a new album already?

Comes out on Tuesday I think.

tragedy is the fucking best

It's streaming at NPR http://www.npr.org/2012/02/26/147294456/first-listen-julia-holter-ekstasis#playlist
I love this girl, Tragedy on vinyl was twice a gift last year

listening to this today. enjoyed tragedy' but i like this more - a lot less reverb, thankfully.

put this in the "not for me but i respect what she's doing" pile. but i'm not crazy about all the laurie anderson comparisons. laurie anderson is hilarious, julia holter is not.

Wait what there's a new album already?

― mac and me (Ówen P.), Friday, 2 March 2012 15:16 (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

some of it is older, i think, has circulated on mixes for a while

She was working on the two albums simultaneously

She went to school w/me! Psyched that she is talk of all the towns. Also from that FACT mix, I can tell she must live in my neighborhood.

i am liking this. i get the broadcast comparisons and hear sian alice group as well. there's a lot to absorb from this record though, those are only my first impressions.

yeah, def feeling this altho it may take a few listens to sink in

Enjoying this a lot, definitely hear some Broadcast influences.

overstuffed, dull

What does overstuffed mean?

this is not what i expected, far more pedestrian than tragedy; i liked it better when i didn't get julia holter but thought it was my fault, rather than the music's.

it's so SMALL sounding but not in a good way, not in an immersive detailed way, just...thin. and her voice is so mimsy

I really like her approach to melodic and harmonic development here, nearly every song ends in a completely different place to where it began and there are so many point when a new melodic line will come in at the most gorgeous moment. I don't understand the "overstuffed" comment upthread, it's actually pretty light (and the points where it falls down are where it isn't).

i honestly thought it was kind of...melody-averse. i spent a lot of time waiting for things to happen. not as much as on tragedy though.

a couple of the songs near the end are better.

I'm pretty adverse to 'ethereal vocals' in general, but I quite like this. Sound great over my morning coffee, making breakfast - I always need records like that :)

"four gardens" is my favorite on this i think

i keep singing the "many many moons" bit to myself

i honestly thought it was kind of...melody-averse. i spent a lot of time waiting for things to happen

It's not melody averse at all, but the songs are sort of structured like classical pieces where the really obvious melodies aren't necessarily there and upfront and centre, it takes time to reach them. I'm thinking of songs like 'Fur Felix', where it plays around over the top of that cello figure for ages and then consolidates into this really lovely repeated refrain, and then it starts undercutting it and breaking it up.

I can understand not really liking the aesthetic, but she knows exactly what she's doing. It's really light in terms of production and arrangement but there's a lot going on, it's not slight at all. Way better than the other 4AD artists mentioned on this thread.

Even the ambient bits feel a lot more purposeful than most ambient does, like the chords are drifting towards something.

a couple of the songs near the end are better.

Hah, the last song is my least favourite, I think she falls down when she picks up the pace and volume a bit.

I saw she tweeted yesterday that she was listening to Laurie Anderson for the first time, since the name comes up so often in reviews.

this cokemachineglow review is amazing/terrible!

http://www.cokemachineglow.com/record_review/6864/juliaholter-ekstasis-2012

discussion on its terribleness here: pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

found ekstasis dull (gave it only a couple cursory listens), like a really flacid broadcast-like music. wanted to like it cuz she's mad cute and champions michael pisaro's music. maybe it grows?

totally grows...love it to death now (took about 4 full spins)

this cokemachineglow review is amazing/terrible!

Ha, I think I'll go on the "amazing" side! Actually I thought it was a good piece and certainly made me want to listen to the album - which is kind of the point.

really liking what i've heard so far. think the "experimental" angle is getting way overbilled. outside of a few sonics, its really more just quirky pop.

jfc, marcello, this is a line from that review:

Holter’s vacuous constructions are left bare to naturally solidify in the tentative advance of dawn, and with the light comes a clouds-parting revelation of latent songwriting talent and preternatural concepts concerning variances in sound and texture.

Which is to say it’s about as cerebral an approach to what amounts to a fairly streamlined avant-pop record as you could imagine, with Holter nimbly folding in left-field referents and heady conceits until lines have been blurred and the results regurgitated as pure manifestations of sonic poetry at the direct inception of indecipherability.

haha contenderizer i known, it's hard to deliberately write as inscrutably as certain folks do almost naturally.

er, i know.

lol @ "vaingloriously referential word salad", respect

Some friends of mine made this video for her at the wolf in DTLA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=H8x-6VHORLU#!

"To naturally solidify" is a split infinitive. Using "regurgitated" and "pure" in the same sentence is a contradiction in terms. A keen editor would have spotted both and sorted them out.

However, as I said, the review was sufficiently interesting for me to want to check out the record, unlike the red-nosed clowning of what Owen P called the "book burning THIS IS SHIT" attitude which clearly isn't confined to the UK.

"To naturally solidify" is a split infinitive

nothing wrong with a split infinitive if it makes the rhythm of the sentence sound better. both "to solidify naturally" and "naturally to solidify" sound much worse. the guiding principle should be euphony.

in the fuss over cokemachineglow dude's bad writing let us not forget his repulsive attitude that was the reason he was called out at all

Nothing wrong with "to boldly go" either but "to naturally solidify," to use a journalistic expression, halts the flow of prose.

"repulsive attitude"?

Marcello, FYI: pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

The "blue collar readers" remark is asinine, especially if meant ironically, i.e. "let's make our posts easy for oiks to read." But I'm an oik, albeit one who benefited from the wonders of the Scottish education system (which is not to deny its dark side of religious segregation, but that's another argument for another thread), who had great, encouraging parents, teachers and tutors right through school and university. With my blog writing I certainly assume a level of shared knowledge - knowing who's reading or who's likely to read the blog - but I never, ever talk down to my readers as though neither brains nor Google existed.

However:

The superiority complex of wannabe highbrows who can't even craft readable prose is reliably repulsive.

This reads like highbrow contempt for those whom Sir Alastair Burnet used to call "plain people" (Translation: "stay in your corner and know your place, oiks"). And bad alliteration.

beautiful album

i tried this again, still can't get into it. feels really passionless to me, no blood and guts or emotional pull - kind of fussy and prissy :(

It's a grower. But I am not sure if this record works so easily for everybody.

What's she currently like live? Playing at a more classically-oriented concert space w/Mike Koldin tonight, mildly curious.

just saw her this past tuesday at the media club in vancouver. pretty much stands behind her keyboard and plays. voice was really strong and i enjoyed her jerky dance moves. she appears shy & does not address the audience a whole lot. glad i saw her though.

I thought this album was really sleepy and pitch-shifted, and it turns out I've just been playing the records at the wrong speed.

It sounded good, though!

she played worthless UK festival Field Day yesterday and was told to leave the premises immediately afterwards to free up space in the car park: https://twitter.com/JULIA_HOLTER/status/208975662994825216

wow that's terrible

That's preeeeeetty shitty. I was at Field Day, she was grrrreat opening the day (yeah, not doing much unexpected, but her singing especially really struck me), and it was all a bit downhill from there. Not drastically so, and it was actually a bit better organised than I expected (having heard so many horror stories), but I don't imagine I'll be back.

Completely understand their request. Would have made it prior to her set, though.

Actually, been listening a bit more and she isn't as bad as all that. Quite like some of this stuff in fact, doh.

the album is really growing on me, thought it was a bit aimless and too drifty at first. i really love "boy in the moon".

Had high hopes for this record since Cole MGN was involved

http://michaelpisaro.blogspot.com/2012/08/announcing-gw-008-and-gw-009.html

'ekstasis' sounds even better in the winter

briefly lambent rays piercing the boiling clouds of vaingloriously referential word salad

I've been coming back to Ekstasis and liking it even more. Definitely one of the albums of 2012 for me.

This is a wonderful record.

I think it's awesome. I went home over Christmas and played it to my parents cos I thought they'd be into it and my mum said it sounded like Enya :(

enya is awesome!

someone posted a song from this on tumblr and i really liked the track in isolation, but i couldn't really get into the album

My teenaged son asked for Ekstasis for Christmas. I haven't listened to the whole thing yet, but I like the bits I've heard. I can understand the Enya comparison, haven't heard anything that reminds me of Broadcast yet.

this plane is taking... off.

ekstasis probably by most-listened-to album of 2012, unless you count that le1f mix which i dunno is that an "album"?

It's Enya on drugs

the song structures are more interesting than enya's

Marienbad sounds like a Jon Anderson track on a Yes album

Reading about Holter today (post-ilx poll) and found out about the Tombstones project that Julia appears on.

More here.

Pre-listening, at the moment I started reading I found this REALLY REALLY exciting. Current avant-garde compositional practice in pop is a thing in my head as I have ideas about what they could sound like -- a music that really exists in my head but here it was. But the first couple of tracks are more like a composer (any composer) subsuming a piece of pop music (i mean it could be pop, or aboriginal music, or Verdi) into their own to such an extent that it becomes 'Wandelweiser' pop except the pieces are short (and music from this end of things can be long and seemingly static, but continuous).

I'll finish the listen tomorrow.

Oh yeah, that's on my "To Listen" Spotify playlist. Can't remember whether I knew about the JH connection. Thanks for the nudge!

i got into this last night heavy. still enjoying it so much. i never expected it to be this warm. i'm hardly able to talk about it using the language that she uses, but the touch that i can only imagine to be the much-discussed "medieval influence" is really quite wonderful. the grandiose nature of the music reminds me of OPN a little; there's something similar organic about the sweeping synths they both use. but i think holter has a more straightforward, less overtly postmodern appeal.

anyways, i've really been loving both tragedy and ekstasis. pity i wasn't up on this for the EOY polls

"boy in the moon" prompted me to order a copy of blade runner on VHS.

Good grief:
http://toronto.en.craigslist.ca/tor/mis/3650607077.html

Saw her perform last night in the midst of a video installation at The Walker Art Center. She's pretty much an introvert, doesn't really say much, but the music was lovely, including a charming version of Roxy Music's "2HB."

I got lost and wandered around in the rain for an hour on the way there, so I only made it to the third set. But yeah, it was a good show, I'm still glad I went.

New album out August 19: Loud City Song

01 World
02 Maxim’s I
03 Horns Surrounding Me
04 In The Green Wild
05 Hello Stranger
06 Maxim’s II
07 He’s Running Through My Eyes
08 This Is a True Heart
09 City Appearing

http://www.factmag.com/2013/05/22/julia-holter-announces-gigi-influenced-new-album-loud-city-song/

with the exclusive iTunes bonus track, "Goddess Eyes III"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmT7GKPsxto

with the exclusive iTunes bonus track, "Goddess Eyes III"

IIRC

Goddess Eyes
Ekstasis: Goddess Eyes Part II
Ekstasis III

third one takes place in afghanistan and is kind of nagl TBH

JH takes on contemporary culture, reveals herself to be as boring as everyone else

http://pitchfork.com/features/update/9147-julia-holter/

also LOL @ "bookstore-themed coffee shop in Echo Park"

i went to see julia holter. i have thoughts about the the sorta divide, with her songs, between more upfront, melodic songs & slightly mannered, laurie-anderson-ish material. her voice is overwhelming. but she played a cover, from the new record, that was really incredible, of hello stranger,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-VDbbjIto4

i also saw julia holter, on her first show of the tour in DC. I thought she was pretty good, and the addition of the violin to her lineup was great. i was really blown away by the opener, jessica pratt, though! she was so awesome! however, i played her music to my girlfriend the next day and was told that she "sounds like jewel". so now i'm having existential doubts about my taste in music.

i've never seen her solo but i saw her backing linda perhacs the other week

(nite jewel, too)

Hey, how was Perhacs?

oooooh, I'm imagining Julia singing "Hello Stranger," and it's just the sound I need in my head right now!

perhacs was great - they managed to pull off 'parallelograms' live and she played a whole ton of new stuff, which sounded REALLY good. new album coming later this year i think?

The new album gets a good review in this month's The Wire

my thoughts so far is that 'Maxim's II' is the banger on this album

have a copy of 'Ekstasis' somewhere which I need to go back to

loving the new record. great night music. bit like julee cruise in places but more abstract.

Shades of Stina Nordenstam?

show at Cecil Sharp House the other night was beautiful, keys-violin-cello-sax-drums lineup and everything so perfectly arranged.

"maxim's i" is nice. kinda reminds me of josephine foster

"city appearing" sounds a lot like broadcast. loving these trish keenan echoes

her drummer is bad in an interesting way, i think

No, her drummer is good.

really great album

Agreed.

I am amazed how good this new one is, given that she's releasing a great album every year - you'd think there would be a slump eventually.

i always want to like her but the new one is growing on me a lot more than previous ones have

I'm kind of the opposite - loved the first two but have been having a hard time getting beyond "that's nice" with Loud City Song. I miss the pop moments. "He's Running Through My Eyes" and "City Appearing" are the tracks I currently like best.

glad her career is doing well after whiney said that she's not music on twitter.

i mean, she's not, she's a human.

huh the new one seems poppier than her old stuff to me. or maybe just warmer.

I know it's easy to infer, but I keep feeling bits of Nite Jewel vibes in the new record, maybe in the pacing, backing/secondary vocal bits. Maybe if NJ was into slightly uncooler 80s stuff? Very lush stuff.

feel like new one is both more demanding _and_ poppier, there's kind of a wider gulf between the songs in that way

she and nite jewel are friends/collaborators

nite jewel is much more (though not exlcuisvely) obviously devoted to a retro sonic palette

Her cover of "Gold Dust Woman" on MOJO Presents Rumours Revisited is outstanding. It takes a haunting song and enhances its ethereal spookiness, without being at all twee. No easy comparisons to Enya here.

Anyone else going to the London show-in-a-church on Monday?

Cole MGN produces both Nite Jewel and Holter

I won't be at the St John's show - I'd probably have gone if I hadn't recently moved, that venue used to be five minutes walk from my house, now it's three trains and closer to 90 minutes :'( - but yr in for a treat.

Very much into this: https://soundcloud.com/dominorecordco/julia-holter-dont-make-me-over

That new single is brilliant.

Sorry to ... plant... inside
Echo, echo, echo, echo, echo, echo inside
We plan our purpose for his ...
We go, we go, we go, we go, we go outside, outside, outside
...fall, and summer gone,
Step to, step to, step to, step to outside
... creature love, follow, follow, follow follow one side
One side, one side, one side, one side

On a bit of a Julia Holter tip right about now

http://devonrecordclub.com/2015/01/23/julia-holter-ekstasis-round-77-toms-selection/

...but which is her best album? (This is the only one I own at the moment).

ekstasis probably my favourite, everything comes together perfectly imo

So Tragedy or Loud City Song next?

loud city song imo

Don't Dream it's Over (2007)

grant that this is 8 (!!) years old, but although i like most of her cover versions, they sound very much as if she applies the same spaced-out artiness (complete with 'distancing' effects on her vocals) to each one, in a quasi-formulaic way. it's getting predictable.

Julia Holter announces new album, Have You In My Wilderness
http://www.treblezine.com/24136-julia-holter-new-album-have-you-in-my-wilderness/

Julia Holter - Feel You
https://youtu.be/X2JgMniIpRM

New song is lovely

have you in my wilderness just leaked

I'm only three songs in and listening on shitty laptop speakers while packing stuff up and I can already tell that this is incredible.

more engaging on first listen than her other stuff

did Cole MGN produce this one as well?

sounds a little like julia is rerecording cocteau twins jams with lyrics translated from kobaian / hopelandish to english

interestingly enough, a good amount of this reminds me of enya? particularly "caribbean blue"

anyway i love it, julia is the best

did Cole MGN produce this one as well?

yep, fresh off the AOTY grammy win.

Really looking forward to this.

This is an amazing album and more people should be talking about it.

her stuff generally has a soporific effect on me, but will give this one another spin

Picked it up yesterday but haven't listened yet.

Night Song just floored me in Morrisons.

there's a trebly sheen on her vocals and a general 'brightness' about the music that makes it harsh on the ears. only heard the mp3s, but i don't have this problem with Loud City Song.. maybe i'm just old. or is it the excessive orchestral lushness that's simply buggin'

New album is a real grower

This is an amazing album but I find it mentally jarring to listen to

Still getting to know it but I love the arrangements - so light and graceful, birdlike somehow, that balance of ornament and simplicity. Great autumn album too

The sax solo on Sea Calls Me Home is hot! Also love the way she stresses the syllables on the chorus. I appreciate some might find her vocals mannered, but to me she does it in a really interesting and charming way.

Not all the songs have hit me yet like that one or Feel You, but as paolo says, it's definitely a grower.

her stuff generally has a soporific effect on me

― calstars, Monday, September 28, 2015 10:04 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

weirdly i think holter would be OK with this!

love the way she stresses the syllables on the chorus. I appreciate some might find her vocals mannered, but to me she does it in a really interesting and charming way.

Yeah I was reading something where she was talking about trying to match her enunciation and the timbre of her voice to the character of the arrangement and it does make a lot more sense once you start listening to it that way.

Whistling part leading into the sax solo is funny in a very wyattish way

Have become very addicted to this record in the last 24 hrs

The lightness of the production suits the record and her voice I think, the only time it really bothers me is when the drums are one of the few elements of the mix, they sound tinny and weirdly stiff, but then this isn't much of a drumming record in general.

The melody that comes in halfway through Betsy completely slays me.

secret weapon on this is the bass playing (is it a double bass or a cello?)

On first listen, the ending of Lucette Stranded On The Island actually made me stop and gawp at my computer.

I liked Ekstasis but I couldn't get my head around Loud City Song so I'm pleased to have enjoyed my first listen. Going to come back to this some more, certainly.

think i've just listened to it seven times in a row now. more trapped inside it with every listen

'i feel like i'm walking around in glue' indeed

I liked Ekstasis but I couldn't get my head around Loud City Song so I'm pleased to have enjoyed my first listen.

Same here - this one seems to take what was good about Ekstasis and couple it with a much more pop sensibility. The specific part of Lucette, from "the birds can sing a song" onwards, is glorious.

LCS is my favourite.

Each of her albums seems poppier than the one before (this isn't a criticism)

I think if she wanted to she could shift a lot of units

she just needs to hook up with taylor swift's publicist

fwiw loud city sing seemed a little more 'difficult' than ekstasis to me

*song

Love every one of her records incl the new one but "Tragedy" is pretty unbeatable

Yeah, this is excellent. Only heard it for the first time tonight but it sounds wonderful. I'd only really known Loud City Songs before and although I heard that lots in the last two years I'm struggling still to remember if that was a lot more electronic than this, like I'm thinking. All of the influences above are right of course, but I can hear Robert Wyatt here as well, especially in the way she kinda talk sings against her own main vocal. Lovely.

This hasn't had the same impact on me as Tragedy or Ekstasis did but there's a sweet Roxy Music vibe through the album that I really like.

not really enjoying this that much (yet) - it's a bit too straight-forward and light compared to the previous records.

"betsy on the roof" sounds like siouxsie and enya collaborating in the best way possible

The level of attention to detail on this one is astonishing, virtually nothing is repeated without being reframed in some way, the arrangements change constantly, even if it's just bringing an extra violin line in or something. In general I think harmony (or at least the possibilities of harmony) are undervalued in current pop music and Holter is excellent at it.

not yet familiar with the new one, but the more nimble, uptempo tracks on Loud City Song are great.. the songs that aren't so ~dreamy~ and reverb-drenched. the instrumental qualities (LSS) are a bit more understated and dry, where the new one feels bigger, brighter, more 'lush', more sheen-y.

This is maybe my favourite album of the year.

This sentiment, I understand somewhat more.

Propose a deathmatch between people repping for this album and those on the Susanne Sundfør thread repping for that album.

That should sort this debate out!

Not so much in its sound, but its overall feel and structure it gives me the same vibe as Rickie Lee Jones' Pirates, which is one of my favourite albums ever, so.

This is maybe my favourite album of the year.

This has been my opinion for a month or so now, it really crept up on me.

must try and get into this again - i love the other records but perhaps find this too song-based or something

I don't know that it's my album of the year (nostalgia is pulling me towards that New Order album) but it's expansive brand of melting swooniness just intrigues me and spins me round and catches me unaware at the oddest of times. I find it hard to work to because every now and then it catches me with something jaw-dropping (like the skronk sax solo that suddenly opens out and becomes a whole *flock* of wailing-bird saxophones all fluttering round my head?) that sweeps me off my feet.

(Also, the lyrical sea/island theme reminds me of a very dear friend of mine.)

i love the other records but perhaps find this too song-based or something

Yeah whereas I like the other records but found myself wishing she'd use that approach in more of a pop context. Most of these are hardly 3min verse-chorus-verse pop songs in any case.

Yeah I'm with Matt on this, this captures her at just the right level of songful coalescence for me - in any other discography it'd typically be the artist's most oceanic and amorphous work.

Yeah they are still unusual for sure, and maybe I'll come around - and similarly it's not like the other records were so experimental as to abandon all song structure or choruses. I think, particularly with Loud City Song, there was a sort of density of feeling or atmosphere, whereas this does feel lighter, playful in a different way. I need to give it another listen or two having put it aside for a while.

xpost

Loud City Song is denser and heavier than the others though, it's only really the Nico-esque opening to How Long? that feels like that here. This one feels like a more pop-oriented take on Ekstasis.

Partly because of the sheen that hangs over most of this, but also due to the general scale of her ambition and all the sea/voyaging references, this really does remind me of the second half of Hounds of Love x the second half of Aerial. It's not that good obviously (that would make it the best album ever made), and I know comparing female solo artists to Kate Bush is lame, but it certainly feels similar *in spirit* if not in sound.

Second half of Aerial definitely. I definitely also see Robert Wyatt as mentioned upthread. And then apart from Rickie Lee Jones the other reference that comes to mind is Jane Siberry (but all mixed up between The Walking and Maria).

I think this is my third favourite album of the year up to now. I have not really listened to her earlier albums - only very cursory - but this immediately hit me. I guess it may have to do with the fact that it is more accessible, quite pop. Her voice and especially her peculiar way of cutting verses in the middle, totally wins me over. There is a certain enchanting mood attached to this album which I love. I don't know how to describe it, she hits a string in me. And on the other hand I miss some depth, everything seems to flow more or less freely without any rough edges.

pirates is a pretty good comparison. preferred lcs but i do love this new one. she might be my favorite act right now, or in any case she's on the shortlist.

Glorious things on this glorious record:

-"Ban-DI-do!"
-bifurcated saxophone on "Sea"
-Joni-isms on "Silhouette" paired with that ending!
-swarm of seagull-Holters over "Lucette"
-everything in the first half of "Betsy on the Roof"
-(very brightly) "I had a good excuse for being late!"
-"look at clouds-" "mirror" "clouuuuuuuds"
-string drones on "How Long?" threatening to cleave you straight off the surface of the earth
-everything in "Everytime Boots" (this is the one that really opens up with time ime)

Psyched to follow up on some the cross-references here and would also add that it's interesting to follow how she uses Robert Ashley as a source, going back and forth on the territory between his deadpan Martian-anthropologist thing and full-on thundering drama. How she does that here actually makes it more "out"/weird/whatever to me than LCS.

i'm digging this

Not so much in its sound, but its overall feel and structure it gives me the same vibe as Rickie Lee Jones' Pirates, which is one of my favourite albums ever, so.

― Tim F, Thursday, October 29, 2015 4:33 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wow yeah, have you written anything on pirates, perchance?

i find her voice even more of a barrier than ever with more accessible melodies - it's so flat and affectless but in a polite music teacher kind of way not an interestingly blank kind of way. she sings every word in exactly the same way and i don't feel a single thing, it's pleasant and occasionally lovely-sounding wallpaper

i'm sure it's a deliberate aesthetic decision, everything about this album is so careful and obviously thought-through, i can't get into it at all though

I went back to Ekstasis (my favourite prior to this) and while I can definitely see how some listeners would enjoy her earlier material more, HYIMW fees so sensuous and warm by comparison.

she sings every word in exactly the same way

I can understand not liking her voice, and I don't think she's an incredible singer by any means, but this isn't remotely true, unless you think she sings the opening of How Long? in the same as the chorus of When The Sea Called Me Home, or the second half of Lucette. The way she enunciated her Ts was really annoying on the first few albums but she's stopped doing that here, more or less.

I actually feel that the very considered nature of this record is what appeals to me, at a time when so much indie pop is so slapdash.

I've already had this argument with Lex on twitter about her vocal stylings, so I'm not going to rehash it, but yes.

What I really love about this record is that it is so mannered, and formal, and there's a restrained quality that makes the bits where she really takes flight seem all the more amazing. It's like you're walking through this perfectly manicured formal garden with perfectly clipped box hedges and immaculate edging and symmetrical borders, then you slip through a hole in the maze and you realise that the whole beautiful construction is on the edge of a wind-swept island, which makes you marvel at the artistry of it all the more.

xp well i definitely prefer this to all slapdash indie pop, yes

i like the mannered, formal feel to an extent, but it never steps outside that for me

branwell otm, mannered is the word I have used to describe it. although it's not as intense or theatrical as her previous, which is what I thought I valued most about JH, it retains that sense of poise and dignity. it's close to being boring but it brings that neat apollonian satisfaction and freshness

yeah that's a great description, branwell. this album is extremely immersive. it's like... when i listen to this album i go into this album.

there is something extremely pure about her voice so that it hits me directly into the heart. and the album is really of one piece, not one average song, it unfolds slowly which makes it even more memorable. ethereal is the word i'd use to describe her voice which is perfectly wrapped into the impressionist music with slight jazz echoes. this is definitely a night album and it should be great to see her perform the songs in the berghain on thursday, the club in which you forget if it is night or day time as it is always dark there. i was there once and it felt like a cathedral - the main room is at least 12 meters high - which should fit perfectly with this music. not sure what you mean by mannered, branwell, in a way each piece of art is mannered as it is not natural but that is a red herring. immersive on the other hand suits well, it is very difficult to escape this music when it is played, not that i'd want to...

rethinking about this album, i think it is my no. 2 this year. in front of destroyer and second only to the incredible apartments album.

I am curious as to what Holter fans would make of Jane Siberry's more abstract efforts like "The Bird In The Gravel".

http://youtu.be/zBqmRm2SwxE

Mannered and formal can be hard to do well.

I am still/increasingly captivated by this album, so many moments of pure magic.

Like how on "Everytime Boots" the country-pop shuffle gets moored on this reef of eerie, disorienting strings and you think it's never going to make it back to harbour, but somehow it does.

Just saw her in the berghain. She and her band (viola, bass and drums) were great. In a way she reminded me of margaret o 'hara. Her voice is so unbelievably expressive. I think she loved the place. And she is rig ht. The berghain is absolutely amazing. in the beginning after the first song she played older more experimental stuff i didn't know before which was good. Then she played more or less the whole album. She gave two encores. During the concert i realised what a beautiful instrument the viola can be. Usually i am not too much into strings but here the viola was phantastic. There was also a little bit of laurie anderson in her performance.

I thought about MMOH in relation to this record too, but mostly triggered by a few tiny little viola?/violin? touches that shares the same wild, yearning quality as the fiddle playing on Miss America.

One thing that niggles me is a little melodic echo of blur's 'the universal' that I keep catching in 'feel you'

Trying to explain what I mean by "mannered and formal" in a good sense. I'm not so good with putting things into words, so I'm going to try pictures.

This is a garden bench:

http://www.mooseyscountrygarden.com/garden-journal-09/garden-bench-rhododendron.jpg

This is a mannered and formal garden bench:

http://media.cdn-redfin.com/photo/68/bigphoto/437/08164437_2_0.jpg

I'm not drawing conclusions about which is more beautiful, because both are very beautiful, in different styles. But there's this beautiful precision and skill and restraint to this record, even though there are touches of wildness that burst through the formal qualities and make it even more lovely.

She's playing in Glasgow soon but it's sold out :(

branwell otm

I'm not so good with putting things into words

this is nonsense btw

But there's this beautiful precision and skill and restraint to this record, even though there are touches of wildness that burst through the formal qualities and make it even more lovely.

Totally OTM.

I often feel like we see mannerism and restraint as a kind of force that gives shape to other things, like a breeze creating ripples on a pond. Each of Holter's records find a different point of accommodation between a variety of impulses, and I would not at all be surprised if she thinks very carefully about her records as different conversations between countervailing tendencies.

This is probably the first of them where songform and songfulness is one of those tendencies, rather than something that gets produced as a byproduct of other conversations.

Loud City Song, for instance, doesn't strike me as being about songs, but perhaps about the chanteuse-performance, which necessarily involves some interrogation of song-form at a second order level.

She was pretty good in an old music hall in London last night, not the most confident of live performers and the size of her band meant she had to strip down the arrangements on several songs that on record are notable for their lushness. But the sparser songs that really fitted with the on-stage setup (Vasquez, Have You In My Wilderness) were incredible.

i enjoyed the lack of polish in her onstage between-song banter in brighton the other night. sang snatches of roxy music and orinoco flow among other things, all very endearing. but yeah vasquez was a surprise standout - at least i think it was that which had an earthy violin/drums/bass coda that made me think of some 70s island records fairport-ish brit-folk thing

new gorgeously dreamy video for "silhouette:"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8_ZWlOKsUQ

hey this album is really cleaning up the year-end lists! and all of my favorite people are here talking about it! i forgot to give it a shot prob bc i didn't really care for loud city song. what i've heard is super lovely

Report back!

yeah i love this. as stated throughout this thread this is her most immediate record and parts of it are still kinda elusive to me, her sense of rhythm is sometimes really strange and displaced which is something that both pulls me in and sometimes leaves me feeling adrift.

the instrumentation on this record is super gorgeous and feels so deliberate that you really appreciate the choices she made

really wish i had heard this record before i filed my enya review lol. their records go great together

She's playing shows in the UK, Dublin and Paris in February :)

Have You In My Wilderness has grown into an AOTY contender for me (as seems to be the case for a lot of people on this thread).
Been exploring her back catalogue over the last few days. So far I'm slightly preferring Ekstasis to Loud City Song, although (a) they're both pretty good and (b) neither of them has grabbed me as strongly as HYIMW yet. Will give Tragedy a shot next.

Buzzing for the Glasgow show in February already :)

Ekstasis > Tragedy > HYIMW > LCS

imo

saw her last night, loved it

This is really wonderful music. Where have I been?

Austin

I hate people who have the opinion that I'm about to have but wow does "Tragedy" completely tower over everything else she's done (or anybody else for that matter)

Will have to search that one out.

Saw her play a mini set on a small keyboard at L.A. nonprofit film house
The Cinefamily with maybe 10 other people a few years back. She is just a
transcendent talent, and her continued success and creative growth makes me think
she'll be a significant force to be reckoned with for a long time

What if she is Luke skywalker's daughter hmmmm

Ekstasis is very good.

(first time hearing it right now)

One run through of Tragedy and I'm pretty disappointed by its non-songs that just seem to meander. Maybe I need to sit with it a little more, but on first impression, not terribly impressed.

The version of 'Feel You' she performed with the Orchestra of Syrian Musicians at Africa Express is quite something. Sadly can't find it on youtube http://open.spotify.com/track/5cvrDq3ESa2CpfG7oEiUc9

In the Same Room not only justifies its existence fairly easily, some of these new recordings feel very much definitive.

Excellent.

I'll check it out. Saw her twice on tour and the first time was great (Loud City Song) but the next show for Have You In My Wilderness felt like a night full of constantly crescendo-ridden pop. Made me miss the subtlety of Ekstasis.

She's on the new Laurel Halo album, Dust

The new rearrangement of “So Lilies” from In the Same Room is so great. I’d be down for the whole of Tragedy re-recorded with a full live band.

I fucking adore that NPR article, great job. I put off reading it until I familiarised myself with the album a bit, because I didn’t want to have any preconceived expectations before listening. But boy, this piece (and the track-by-track analysis) really does give another dimension to this already complex record. Especially for a person like me—English is not my first language, so it really helped me catch some nuances/references in the lyrics. Thanks.

^ Shit, wrong thread. Sorry.

but who's that article about, i wanna read it

I saw her in Bologna last night. There was a lot of new material, which left a very favourable first impression. There was one song the title of which she said she didn't know, which is probably the most boisterous song she's ever written, with high-pitched vocal freakouts and what have you. Bring on the next album, in an event.

Yeah, saw her in Lisbon last week, impressive show, just her and a piano, a guy on synths. Good songs, a style of her own.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhBrJDgIxO4

revisiting this album and love it.

the vocal on "What did i do to make you feel so bad? What did i do that you would make me feel so bad?" kills

also love the euphoric birdsong vocals of "lucette stranded on the island"

it's such a great album! i've started listening to it when i want to calm and center myself, and it works wonders

^ good way of putting it

Kind of inspired by the 'best multi-album run' thread, because she's had a fantastic one.

ANY news about a new LP? Rumours?

I saw her live in November 2016, she debuted two or three new tracks -- she even thanked the audience for being enthusiastic about this new, yet-unreleased material. It made me think a new album was surely coming very soon, but that was obviously not the case. HYIMW turns 3 in two months, I think it's been her longest break between records so far?

Would love a new record soon. Have You In My Wilderness and In the Same Room have set the expectations pretty high, but I'm hopeful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5uwPaCvbhA

this is maybe the best thing she's ever done

Double album Aviary out on October 26th, can't wait!

a double album! awesome

press release mentions "Blade Runner-inspired synth work" ...!

Wow, that single is gorgeous. Kind of reminds me of something from Laure Anderson's Mister Heartbreak.

Pre-ordered that shit so fast.

New song is good. Really looking forward to a double album from her. She's done nothing except improve with record, so my hope are pretty high for Aviary.

I love the new single. Luxurious.

I’ve given her a bunch of chances and was encouraged by the synth mention above but stuff doesn’t have enough structure for me, not enough of a groove I guess

Cannot wait as well

she is good live. first time she told me that if i wanted to buy her record, i had to make sure i had bus change. mensch

second time it was all crescendos, but have you in my wilderness is top drawer

I saw her live in the Berghain, phantastic place and great concert. She is so natural and has quite a large spectrum, she never ceases to amaze. In a way I see her as the legitimate successor of Laurie Anderson. Though her music is totally different.

^ I totally get what you're saying with the Laurie Anderson comparison! Of course they're miles away stylistically but at the same time it makes so much sense in my mind.

I saw her live twice, the first time after Ekstasis and before Loud City Song, and the second time after Have You in My Wilderness. Both shows were great but the second one was especially moving and memorable (nice indoor venue instead of a festival tent; she also seemed more confident as a perfomer and it seemed... IDK, somehow grander?). She's an incredible musician, it's such a joy to just sit and watch her play. After the second show she also did a meet & greet almost immediately afterwards and seemed like a truly lovely person, but I was too shy to approach her (and I didn't bring anything to sign).

I don't disagree that her music can lack struture but I don't think that's the point, I love how she explores textures and tensions and I really like this new single

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIk2CGUTPr0

fully expecting this new album to be her masterpiece

she seems to get better with every record which is a rare thing these days (the last one is divine)

may have posted this earlier but she is also super down to earth. Saw her on LCS tour and not only did she geek out about kate bush and buffalo 66 with me, but she asked me to choose what to pay for her vinyl so I could safely get home on transit!

I love that the latest single is a beatless, freeform exploration that lasts seven minutes, I know there's other people doing similarly audacious things but she just feels so unparalleled as an artist sometimes

Just received a "shipped" notice on my preorder. Really exciting.

this album is really... so so much. often breath-taking but like i could do without the occasional extended dissonant bagpipes drone section but thankfully there's not too much of that.

after one listen i'm leaning towards 'truly incredible accomplishment'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNTxn7BcfGQ

a few more listens in and this is completely engrossing for the whole 90 minutes and covers so much ground, absolutely her masterpiece

Does anyone know if the wingdings on the front cover say anything?

"Sweet in the melting world", it seems

Got an email a bit ago from Domino informing me that my digital copy of the album is now ready for download. That's a cool new thing that I don't think I've experienced before. Just tracked my package and it still says not expected to be delivered until Tuesday. Still at work for now, but at least I'll be able to listen to it over the weekend.

Holter's voice reminds me of Siouxie.

The way this is sequenced and the way the songs are structured is almost like a modern symphony. . . or, no: it's an opera!

So, as such things go, there's no way in HELL you can properly assess it after just one listen.

it sort of feels like an apocalyptic version of talk talk

i cant wait to listen to this

fuck it just starts like that, huh?

an apocalyptic version of talk talk

Where do I sign up?

Holy shit @ this album

This is challenging.

Can barely recall her previous albums. Now we're talkin'.

In many ways this album reminds me of Björk's Utopia: classical in its conception, rife with gorgeous trouvailles, but the whimsy and precious affectations are occasionally too much to bear (less so on Aviary, however, which is more varied timbrally). Still, it's hard not to be impressed.

I managed to listen to half of it yesterday and give it a (sem-distracted) full spin today, so I don't have really much to say other than that I adore it. Some early reviews had me slightly worried that it might be overly self-indulgent or impenetrable but that doesn't seem to be the case at all.

Let me just chime in on that note with my reaction after two, very full, very intense listens:

Honestly, the more I try to understand it, the less I do. Read lyrics; that made it worse. I mean, think about it: the lack of immediate musical repetition (and then, just at short intervals), seemingly nonsense lyrics, seemingly nonsense chords (+the combination of those two in unison), and oddly comforting moments of sheer beauty (the beginning portion of 'In Gardens' Muteness' and the whole of 'Words I Heard' are just stunning) make for an album that you could literally start at any point within the album's sequencing to give a first time listener a "starting point" and then run the album from there, with the portion you cut off the beginning now at the end, and they would have no other reference point.

All that is to say: it is an album nearly without context.

I'm aging myself perhaps here, however: I now honestly understand what people (usually baby boomers) meant when they said that some contemporary music was so foreign-sounding, but simultaneously intriguing, that it (usually Bob Dylan or the Grateful Dead in the 60s) sounded to them like it was from another planet. Aviary is just that completely without context. Fucking rabbit hole of music. Wow.

Fucking meant worm hole.

*deep sigh*

Fuckin' whole goddamn analogy riding on that one thing.

Sheesh.

“Rabbbit hole” also works in a Lewis Carroll sense.

uhhhh ok i should check this out

an apocalyptic version of talk talk

This is 90 minutes!?!? Given that and all the praise in this thread I can’t wait to listen to this

I think the one word describing this album best at the moment for me is unfortunately suffocating.

i understand how people could find this album completely impenetrable, but i've found it the easiest of any of her albums to get into. i really wanted to like Have You In My Wilderness but something about the rhythmic sensibility, and the way the instruments fit together on it just felt awkward to me and i could never really get into it. Aviary on the other hand is so free-flowing and dense with sound that it's like a whole world to get lost in. the only place it really loses me is that 5 minute bagpipe drone at the start of Everyday is an Emergency. there's some fairly accessible songs on it hidden between all the drones etc. too

Listening to this album for the first time was the perfect use of the extra hour we were granted this morning.

Definitely worth splurging on a physical copy of this btw - both the vinyl and CD editions are beautifully packaged, and worth having the lyric sheet in front of you at least once while listening.

(nerd post)

For example, one lyric is an acrostic that appears to refer to this specific book. Not that knowing this makes the song any better of course.

A small point in response to those put off by the density of the music and arrangements: it is worth noting that this is addressed in the second half by the simple replacement of viola with violin, which gives the whole a lot more space to breathe.

( / nerd post)

i do like how it really bursts open with I Shall Love 2 as the finale to the difficult first side, and then the second side is a little more straight forward. it's like you've finally reached another world after a long journey

I shall love 2 seems like a continental divide. From then on the waters seem to flow into another direction. But somehow to get there is quite hard and i have not yet succeeded in listening to the 2nd half.

This is great! Every JH album is great in its own way, I'm not sure I get the sentiment that this is somehow her masterpiece or a big step up from HYIMW or Ekstasis. Early days though.

It's much grander in scope than its predecessors. I've managed to listen through twice. I haven't digested it, but I'm looking forward to getting to know it much better

OMG @ 'Les Jeux To You'.

This sounds awesome so far, closer to the kind of album I was ready for after Loud City Song. Every song seems to have at least a few moments as huge as "Maxim's I" ~0:56 or "Boy in the Moon" ~4:28.

i placed an order for this but haven't rec' it yet. is "underneath the moon" a roches cover?

*rec'd

I've only listened to this once and it's going to take a while to get to grips with it but I'd have to say it's her best work yet. She gets better with every album and there's not many artists you can say that about

After the first listen I was pretty much dumbfounded, and left with a sense that I had listened to something extremely dense, almost completely bereft of hooks, that doesn't make for easy entry, but also a sensational piece of musical exploration. I'm looking forward to getting further and deeper inside this record.

Nerdy fact: "Whether" used to be called "Heijinian" (and was based around staccato piano) when I first heard her play it live back in 2016. That night she also performed a slower ballad called "Where R U" on the setlist, but I don't remember it enough to match it to any of the songs on Aviary.

Keep the nerdy facts coming! I'm loving the allusions to women poets.

I need to listen to this a second time, but I felt like I was listening to a kind of Restorative School Of Magic counter-part to The Drift's spells of darkness and destruction.

Which is to say, both Holter and Walker have elected to create a style of music that, instead of composing songs with either already-existing or here-are-some-new-ideas approaches to melody/hooks/lyrics/whatever, they stop "writing songs" and push the very concept into the abstract-- thus the lack of hooks or melodies and the obliqueness of the lyrics-- to create a listening experience where the essential qualities of the material are found in the production and sonic composition rather than any "songs"

Hard to describe maybe? I'll listen a few more times and think about it more

i think the second side is pretty full of melodies, even if the vocals are a little pushed back in the mix

I am listening to this for the first time today, in a bit of an anxious mood and it isn't exactly soothing, but loving it anyway - should come back to it when in the right mood.

my LP just showed up and man no one was lying about the packaging, forgot it came with a signed photo too <3

this is fucking magnificent

Honestly cannot believe how stunning “Turn the Light on” is

every time i find myself thinking "oh the hooks have all disappeared i am in a wilderness of tones" a hook usually appears

i love this album

oh and yeah the back half is full of bangers i guess

Although every song on this is very different from every other song, I feel justified in saying that it’s like an entire album of songs like Jane Siberry’s “Bird In The Gravel”.

otm

I’m a bit afraid to listen to this as I feel very proprietary about Ekstasis and I don’t want this to be better.

Tim F otm a very specific and correct otm

Humbug.

Let Jeux To You HD good though

*Les

Rest of the album gave me anxiety. So much...music, so much content, and none of it exciting. I felt throttled and exacted. I don't like her song structures or melodies. I don't understand her art. Glad you're all enjoying yourselves though - I just don't get it!

I feel the same and its a blessed relief when the luxurious sound of "I Shall Love 2" comes around

I've only listened to this album twice though tbf so it'll take a while for its charms to become apparent

“A bit too extra, for imago” should be the sticker on the album cover

it still makes zero sense to me that lj doesn't like her

i mean i get it but also when i listened to this record i thought "maybe this is the one for lj" :(

To my mind, there was at least a 75% chance that he would proselytise for it but the quarter won out.

I'll certainly listen to it again, as much to work out why it doesn't work for me as to try and get something out of it

I think I liked the short second track as well tbf. I'm not sure she can pull off things that aren't pop. Talk Talk feels like a really big stretch

Talk Talk is just the easy reference point people immediately reach for when they hear music with woodwinds and a sort of hushed atmosphere, it doesn't sound like Talk Talk to me.

It's like when people compared Field of Reeds to Talk Talk and it's just like, Jesus, listen to other music!

there’s way more space and delay on talk talk records, this is v composed and full and constantly thrumming

there’s a lot of space on this record too but imo it’s used very differently

haha I made the exact connection to field of reeds when reading this thread! Not so much the talk talk thing as the general casting around for reference points, just felt similar to me.

There's a lot more repetition on Talk Talk records as well, this is almost constantly roving into new areas.

much of this fell straight into my kaitlyn aurelia smith 'saying little with a lot' unhappy place tbh, if you want a comparison you'll probably find more flattering or accurate. something about lush maximalism

i think she's saying quite a lot, the experience of the record is like a brain unloading itself (or, true to its title, like being in an atrium of squawking thoughts)

admittedly this is a quality shared by most of my favorite records this year (the mewithoutyou record lyrically is like a brain unloading itself)

The title is the cherry on top of the “huh lj doesn’t like this”

speaking of titles, she and KAS have the same irritatingly arch way of titling things too. 'ekstasis', 'euclid', 'i would rather see', 'i am curious, i care'

This is fascinating so far. Full of surprising turns.

and yeah I'm sure she's saying plenty. I just can't hear any of it. I'm saying 'it's not you, it's me' this time

Don't much care for KAS for the very reasons you mention, yet I enjoyed my first encounter with Aviary – its maximalism did not strike me as an empty form carefully concealing itself.

love JH but this was a racket for me on first listen

I'll give it another chance now/this evening

fgti was otm upthread when he compared this to Scott Walker's late works, a far apter point of comparison than Talk Talk.

This is going to be fun to explore. I feel like this is the music I've been waiting to hear this year.

vinyl feels like the right format for this record, the chunking helps it feel less oppressive

also just on a selfish consumer level, I appreciate a double LP that's actually the length of an old-school double album

May have to double down on some of my criticism. Chaitius which I'm enduring right now is basically high-budget muzak with some terribly affected echo-mumbling on top. I cannot begin to see why she'd release this. And the the big melodic change-up is...an ascending scale. The melodies are just nothing

I think the Scott Walker comparisons stem from the horns bit in Everyday Is An Emergency ripping off that one bit in Clara. The comparison sort of tanks after that though as Walker was all about vivid juxtaposition whereas this all feels like its trying to goo all its textures together

YOU'RE a gooey texture!

ILM's biggest Jyte Gyte fan: sorry guys, this is too much for me.

I feel that misrepresents my criticisms

I'm only joking. No insult intended

OK the first song to save me from distress is maybe In Gardens' Muteness

the beginning of the bangers

imago is a pointilliste.

I had to pause due to work but I did like that song. It ditched all the gooey echoey muzak nonsense and tried to actually yknow be a song or whatever rockist pointillist thing I believe in

Will listen to the rest presently

So yeah, there are (imo) two good songs, and they both sabotage themselves because JH has seemingly no sense of momentum, or when she has a good thing on her hands. In Gardens' Muteness is really good for about five minutes, then the climax of the song is this clunky one-note piano thudding that sort of works but I'm sure wasn't the best way for it to go. And then - worse - Les Jeux To You (these fucking TITLES) actually hits an awesome art-rock groove - like, after so much flimsy muzak, something with purpose! - and then instead of riding with it to the stars as she threatens to, she just abandons it and returns to the muzak for no apparent reason. I just can't deal with it. If it was just those two songs then I could deal with it as a good but flawed single but today I've sat through this album for three full hours and gawped at its RYM average score and wondered how everyone's brain is wired up compared to mine with increasing alarm. What is wrong with me/you?

idk man maybe it's bc you keep referring to it as muzak

TS: clocks or clouds.

Chaitius which I'm enduring right now is basically high-budget muzak with some terribly affected echo-mumbling on top.

idk are you listening to the bass in this track? the tightly turning strings that make up the first part of it? the silence it drops away into leaving her uttering clipped unintelligible syllables in empty space? "muzak" feels intentionally distancing

extremely LJ titles on this (e.g. les jeux to you)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNOTz3M-gbQ

^ this film is useful if you haven't seen it and are wondering what holter's intentions were

imago, what's your opinion on I Shall Love 2? That's the hit for me.

sounds like spiritualized badly covering joy division but then the last 30 seconds are good

also if you can get through that video with a straight face then i don't know how to help you

I love Have You in My Wilderness a lot, but I’ve never really gotten into any of her other albums. I think I will not be in a hurry to give this a listen.

sounds like spiritualized badly covering joy division but then the last 30 seconds are good

Oh Icarus.

It is both hilarious and predictable that after literally years of playing musicological pin-the-tail on the donkey every time you want to elevate an artist you like over one you don't, when you're confronted with an artist at least adjacent to the indie rock mainstream making highly composed, ambitious, dense and yes in places microtonal music - and a classically-trained artist who knows what she's doing at that - all you can think of to do is term it "muzak" or reach for the most off-the-peg "art-rock" reference points imaginable.

It's almost like your entire schtick was hot air all along and now you're trying to belittle the music to try and deflect that. It was better - and more honest - when you just admitted you didn't understand it or didn't like it. (I don't understand it either but happily I at least I like the noise it makes).

His dislike of ambient music is remotely relevant here. I also get the sense that 'atmosphere' is not a category he's interested in for its own sake – it ultimately boils down to narrativity (albeit of the bizarre and non-linear variety), hence his insistance on 'songwriting'. Anyway, props for your commitment to genuinely unpopular opinions, imago, I'm personally a fan even when I disagree (p.s.: Black Dresses are quite cool on the purely instrumental front, but I can't stand the singing at all, at least in the absence of fountains of youth).

Maybe but I don't get the sense (at all!) that this record is about atmosphere for its own sake. There's clearly a narrative here, the songs keep moving forward and rarely revisit previous territory, in a way that is obviously going to frustrate a lot of listeners who were brought up on pop or rock music and like repetition and easily identifiable structures.

What it isn't particularly interested in offering are those cathartic rock moments (and even most of what is usually termed 'art-rock' tends to rely on those moments as well) where everything *kicks in*, probably the big thing that someone would get out of These New Puritans or even later Radiohead and not this, for example. It shares that with a lot of ambient music obviously but also a lot of post-war notated music.

I could provide literally hundreds of examples of non-linear unrepeating music that I love - and just as many examples of music that offers non-obvious catharsis. And it's not like this album doesn't have builds or climaxes. I'm just not sure it handles any of those things in a way I like.

It's also I suspect why he gets frustrated when the banging bit in Le Jeux To You gallops off into the distance never to be seen again, even though the ghost of that refrain continues throughout the last section of the song.

I dunno, a lot of the time it basically comes down to whether you've heard enough to convince you to meet the music half-way and treat it as a puzzle to be solved rather than one to be railed against. I wouldn't blame anyone for not being arsed with this record but defaulting to a Richard Keys level of criticism doesn't benefit anyone.

(xpost)

'Atmosphere' can also be Ligetian…

There is, of course, narrative in all things. I just don't think it's especially foregrounded here – if anything, there's a fragmentary logic at work, as if all of it were dénouement, from beginning to end. I do agree that there is precious little release from the aviary (but it's not completely lacking, either).

xps

As for 'muzak', well obviously I wish I had the theoretical chops to explain why the melodies here are dull and even maddening (with the two exceptions given) but I don't. SAVE US SUND4R, basically. What I'll say is that In Gardens' Muteness is basically just her + keys, and I think that having that sonic limitation forces her to think more creatively about the melodies and the song-structure, as opposed to the more 'composed' songs, where she's going for a sort of grand ensemble sound-feeling that while skilfully put together with classical training or whatever has a deadening effect on me (again, I've acknowledged that I may be the problem here).

The 'ghost' of that refrain in LJTY (lol) is too cryptic! It's too denying! Too astringent!

I'm just not sure it handles any of those things in a way I like.

Dude that's fine but don't try and reduce it to the level of hold music just because you don't like it! You're doing it again here, you're trying to appeal to classical qualities you don't know or understand in order to 'prove' your argument when it's obvious to everyone else that it can't be proven.

Literally no musicologist would be able to explain why "the melodies are dull", I mean they could but it would be a completely fraudulent exercise even if you accept that melody is the point here.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the underpinning chords and progressions are mostly quite basic and ARGUABLY uninteresting, but I'd need to listen and relisten to confirm this.

Everyone should read @jennpelly's fantastic review of @JULIA_HOLTER's Aviary today. It's one of the finest albums of the year, and Jenn did an incredible job of translating what makes it such an achievement (and a pleasure to listen to). https://t.co/vZCdSqnLtc

— Philip Sherburne (@PhilipSherburne) November 2, 2018

gotta pick this album up. i'm not overly familiar with her music, but I saw her (and the other musicians) perform a version of that cover of Condemnation I posted upthread at a mutual friend's memorial service, and it was so genuinely moving. It was later released as a 7" via Domino w/proceeds going to a mental health service.

That friend spoke highly of her and her process and craft, it's kind of impossible of me to think of her without thinking of him playing one of her records for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnKwro7dO0c

stumbled across this lovely cover of That's Us/Wild Combination she did

This album is made for playing loud and on headphones. There's so much texture and depth, it's wonderful.

Ha, I put it on for the first time last week. At first, it seemed almost like it was incapable of reaching me or making any impact, although I could see that there were interesting things going on. Then I turned it up and it sounded like the greatest thing.

(I doubt I can save anyone, though, given that i) I only listened to it once and not that analytically and ii) even the analytical presentation that I did put time into seems riddled with holes right now.)

Then I turned it up and it sounded like the greatest thing.

This was my experience with "Chaitius" in particular. It didn't make sense until I turned up the volume and could take in all of the detail.

I'm not sure which track I like most yet. One of "Underneath the Moon," "In Gardens' Muteness," or "Turn the Light On" probably.

One of the major stumbling blocks for Julia's music, that I still have to kind of mentally ignore, is her tendency to rely upon kick-snare-kick-snare kind of straight-ass patterns, from Ekstasis onward this became a real part other language, this rhythmic squareness that seems at times deliberately static and numbing. On the new one, this "Polka setting" sound is only really a feature in a couple songs-- "Les Jeux To You" has a knees-up-Mother-Brown moment. It is not my favourite thing about Julia's music, it reminds me of St. Vincent's over-reliance on "straight-4 kicks on almost every song", and seems to (to my ears) often keep the music grounded instead of allowing it to take flight. That's my only perennial criticism about her stuff, she's one of my favourite musicians otherwise. It's great to hear (on this album) a return to the more formless stuff that first attracted me to Tragedy

that rhythmic squareness is something that really bugged me about her music previously and always prevented me from really getting into it up until this album. on the rare occasion it does show up on Aviary it doesn't bother me though because it actually works with the songs it's used on

Yeah I agree

"Colligere," what a beautiful track.

vinyl feels like the right format for this record, the chunking helps it feel less oppressive

She's playing the Funkhaus? Ooh!

Just booked tickets. Thanks!

I have never been there, are you supposed to sit? I saw her in the Berghain on the Wilderness tour and it was great.

I listened to it again today and agree with Alex. Even by the time I got to the second half (did someone here call that half the "bangers"? because they aren't bangers), I felt worn down. I suspected that, objectively, I was hearing good songs - but I'd grown so accustomed to her vocal and musical personality by that point that they didn't feel fresh.

(did someone here call that half the "bangers"? because they aren't bangers)

i was joking but the melodies do get straighter in that half imo

"Everyday is an Emergency" is the hardest track for me, though I'm not sure that it's meant to become easy. The rest of the first disc really opened up with repeated listenings. I didn't expect that "Another Dream" would be one of my favourites.

Surprised no-one has name-checked Alice Coltrane here, as a reference. This is such a free-jazz record, in terms of creating your own space and inhabiting it like no on else could. Presenting us mortal listeners not just a world of sound, but presenting a world of sound and escaping from it, traveling to new worlds, all in the same 60 minutes or so. It's incredible. This record is huge.

Man, I love the section in "I Shall Love 1" from 1:25 until the vocals come back in.

wow i'd never heard the walking by jane siberry, what a record!

The rhythmic stiffness thing has occasionally bothered me about JH but usually only when the tempo goes above a certain level (When The Sea Called Me Home is my least favourite on the last album). And it really hampers the second song, Whether, here.

The counterpoint to this is that if that was all she was interested in doing rhytmically then you wouldn't get, say, the weird lopsided skank on Underneath The Moon, and there's always a lot going on in the rhythmic interplay between the various instruments.

I think "Whether" is effective as grounding and contrast within the album as a whole. I like the big outro. But I haven't heard any other Julia Holter albums yet, so the last thing I noticed while listening to Aviary was an over-reliance on heavy-plodding rhythmic stuff.

I have never been there, are you supposed to sit? I saw her in the Berghain on the Wilderness tour and it was great.

― Ich bin kein Berliner (alex in mainhattan), Monday, 5 November 2018 23:43 (yesterday)

It depends I think on which room she will play in. I've seen Gas and Casper Brötzmann there and people sat on the large steps on the floor.

The last time she played in Berghain it was on the same night as Joanna Newsom's gig in the Admiralspalast, for which I already had tickets

unlikely I'll get into this album but I'm confident I'd love it live, no shows in DK though

Uh, yes, she's playing at Roskilde :)

whaaaat that's great! I'll be looking forward to that

In my opinion, The Walking is one of the great lost masterworks of the 80s. I wrote on our blog:

https://devonrecordclub.com/2011/02/18/round-2-toms-selection/

When someone alluded to Bird In The Gravel upthread, my interest in Aviary was piqued as the final cut on The Walking is, to my ears, one of the most remarkable 10 mins in recorded music.

I have yet to hear Aviary...but I expect to be disappointed as nothing could be THAT good!

don't expect anything at all otherwise you will surely be disappointed...

I love The Walking

I can’t decide what the hell is going on with it. The piano part slaved to MIDI, every note programmed at the same velocity, it’s this bizarre accident of marrying “wow MIDI is cool” with such a heartfelt lyric. I transcribed the piano part to learn it but the song loses its magic when the piano is humanized, oddly enough

"Everyday is an emergency" is amazing. The bagpipe sounds like the bright burning sun in the desert if it had a voice. When I was cycling across Crete in the summer of 1982 it was very hot and the crickets were making an incredible, infernal voice in the bushes and olive trees. It was deafening but I loved it. The bagpipe makes a similar relentless noise here. It is so intense.

I never got into Jane Siberry, for a start I don't like her elf-like voice. Julia Holter seems more grounded and closer to nature. At the same time physical and cerebral. The more I listen to Aviary the more I appreciate the formlessness and openness of most songs. There is something liberating and emancipating about the free flow of the tracks.

Whiney, get ready to make the poll

i don't think alex said anything ridiculously ott there other than characterizing jane siberry's voice as "elf-like"

listening to The Walking this is great, total bradbait!

surprised i'd never heard of this before

Really love this album more every time I play it. I have held off on trying to assess it properly with some sort of rating or one or two sentence synopsis and I'm glad I did. It's just not that kind of album.

The listener has earned the beauty of the second airy and bukolic half of this album after having had the stamina to get through the rough and claustrophobic first half. And in between there is the diamond "I shall love 2" which cuts them in two. The second half has indeed a touch of "Spirit of Eden".

this alb good

I sat on some bagpipes once by mistake and they made a ghastly noise. After hearing "Everyday is an Emergency" I now strongly suspect Holter was there recording the whole affair.

a Real Bronx Cheer

i've been listening to this on CD and there are some pretty fatiguing harsh frequency/distortion things going on in the first half - esp with the vocals at times - is this the case for anyone else? mastering thing or an artistic choice i guess is what i'm asking.

Oddly I've enjoyed this more on Spotify with wireless headphones than on vinyl. The first time I listened on vinyl and turned the thing off after 2 and a half songs. I've gone back a fair few times, but listened all the way through today for the first time when listening on Spotify. It might have been a coincidence - maybe I was just more in the mood. It's lovely and enchanting.

And I'm really enjoying what Alex is saying. Bring on the fucking poll.

there’s a run of a few songs on the back half of this that are 👌🏻

... call me another convert to the walking. amazing record

I’d be very pleased if one of the outcomes of this thread is a whole bunch of new fans of The Walking.

Traffic was especially slow for this evening's commute, so I was able to get through the whole of Aviary and, for the remnants of my drive, I decided to just go backwards with Julia and went with In the Same Room. Only got about three songs in, but man, that album is so good. Some of the (re)arrangements on it are very much in the vein of proto-Aviary. I've had and enjoyed all her albums for a couple years now, but Aviary really is turning me into a Holter Stan. It was beginning to get there after In the Same Room came out, but Aviary is just so fucking epic. All the comparisons to the Jane Siberry record feel really appropriate because the more I listen to Aviary, the more it sounds like one of those super idiosyncratic, intense and passion-filled albums that seemed to show up every few years in pop music since the late 60s. Those albums like Trout Mask Replica, Skip Spence's Oar, and I'm sure there's an entire thread dedicated to similarly confounding (yet also irresistibly fascinating) albums that completely defy most precedents. I know the album is still brand new, but I definitely see Aviary in that same class. It's just such an "I don't give a fuck" move for her, but that the music also happens to be absolutely captivating scores tons of points with me.

I'm gonna go smoke a blunt and listen to the rest of In the Same Room.

Also, yeah on the Julia / Alice Coltrane comparisons. If you had told me that same thing after Have You In My Wilderness came out, I probably would not have been able to hear it at that point. But, it really picks up on In the Same Room (if you're just looking for one representative song in this sense, skip ahead to 'Vasquez'; fraf). Holy hell. I'm just in complete MIND= B L O W N mode right now.

Sorry. I'm gonna go fuck off and listen to the Cardigans.

Agree, Austin. In the Same Room is easy to overlook and/or underappreciate but it's a solid album and the rearrangements are great.

It's so fucking good, man! Jeez, it's good.

And I'm really enjoying what Alex is saying.

Has she played this record out yet with a full band? I would imagine it could quite a force of nature live.

i don't think she's properly started touring it yet, but she's expanding her live band for this tour so it should be impressive. i'm hopefully going to see her in february

Hope to catch her live again at some point but I'd also love to see some live sessions for KEXP/KCRW/whatever.

like a Paul Bley album from 1986

Not to derail the thread but this lead me to his record with Chet Baker which is so damn near perfect right now I suspect witchcraft.

is it? fragments with surman, frisell & motian is about the most perfect ecm album imaginable.

I'm listening to this now - thanks for the recommendation. ECM is a lifetime's project.

The way the ground shifts under Another Dream.

Seeing her in two weeks and then again a week later with the Tashi Wada group. Can't wait!

I just found her NTS mix of inspirations for Aviary. It's fascinating if you've been spending a lot of time with the album, and confirms some of the comparisons above.

https://www.nts.live/shows/guests/episodes/julia-holter-26th-october-2018

Excited to listen to that mix. Really amazing album.

Holy hell, she's into Steve MOTHERFUCKING Tibbetts.

I want to have her babies.

Notice that he has a writing credit on "Why Sad Song." I didn't realize it was a quasi-cover. The original is the final track in the NTS mix.

that nts set is great, thx for posting

Cool video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kNELAl5pb0

The concert in the Funkhaus in Berlin on the East side of the river Spree was brilliant. The venue, the old GDR radio building is quite special with the wooden floor, the maybe 10 Meter high ceiling, the steps you sit on and finally the stage which is rather in the middle and not at the end of the hall. I really enjoyed that I could clearly distinguish each instrument. Especially the restrained melancholic trumpet sound was amazing but I even loved the violin (usually I am not a big fan). Not to speak of the sonorous double bass, the bagpipes and the percussion. Holter's way of singing does not cease to impress me. The often pretty complex melodies and harmonies of the songs are in her voice which somehow often seems to go up and is really uplifting and transcendental. I really got used to the openness of the songs. My favourite was the encore "Betsy on the Roof" from "Wilderness" where her voice visits places nobody's voice has ever been to. Grand cru.

Envious! Glad you had a good time and I hope I get to see her with this expanded band. Has the setlist differed much from this one: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/julia-holter/2018/schauspielhaus-bochum-germany-23972457.html ? Other than "Betsy" for the encore.

There were other small differences to that setlist. First they started with the calm "In Gardens' Muteness" and only then played the loud cacophonous "Turn the Light on" which sounds like they tune their instruments. I found that a good choice to go from silence to noise and not the other way round. And then there was "I Would Rather See" which she wanted to play solo on harmonium next time. The songs sounded all a little different than on record, not as explicit, slightly estranged. It was a magic evening.

I was there too, Alex. Great gig. Wonderful sound. My only quibble with the Funkhaus is that it is uncomfortable sitting on the wooden floor/steps.

You are right about that, I sat on the right side quite close to the stage and after about an hour or so as there was nobody behind me l laid down and stretched out my legs. I am not so sure about the sound actually,
I hardly understood anything of her in-between song banter. But the reason was probably that she kind of whispered into the mike.

She speaks so slowly that its actually hard to follow.

I think she spoke quite fast (in interviews she speaks slowly and articulates very well and is easy to understand), she seemed a little nervous and I had the impression that she spoke more to herself than to the audience.

both times I’ve seen her she’s nervously made lots of goofy in-jokes between songs

sounds great you guys, would like to see her in a setting like that

her voice is so mimsy

― lex pretend, Wednesday, 14 March 2012 18:00 (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've had the beginning of I shall love 2 in my head all morning where her vocals are indeed very mimsy, and it's made me realise how enamoured I am becoming both with this album and with those sorts of affected, contorted vocals more generally. I think her singing is great on this, she sounds v much like herself. All her albums have drawn power and dynamism from a sense of scale, that comfort & delight in personhood, the intimacy of being your small self in a vast swirling world. it's v affecting and charming to me.

Nothing like a excellent show to solidify your favourite album of the year, or maybe it’s an excellent album that’s solidifying my show of the year. In any case Holter is the cement that is setting quickly around my 2018 highs. Beautiful night. V well behaved audience.

Tashi Wada (who was the bagpipes and synth tonight) is leading a show with Holter next week and I think it will be quite different, but still cannae wait

Ugh, jealous. I'm weighing whether to make the trip to Montreal to see her in February. I'm dying to hear what something like "Chaitius" will turn into live.

This is pretty easily my favourite album of the year.

it was a really good show, she was extremely feeling herself in a way I found q inspirational and the audience were suitably enthralled. I have quite a way to go with getting a grip on this album and chaitius in particular is obscure w/ all the occitanian troubadour biz. it was quite fragmented live, but everything seemed simpler and breezier, more a matter of flowing between moments. she wrote "stay sweet in the melting world" on the album I bought. I'm glad she didn't write "the bananas are getting yellow!!!"

Cosign whoever it was who said this is a totally different album on headphones, there's so much digital trickery flying around the vocals in places, hidden sounds that are only noticeable up close.

Giving it my first listen after staying prudently away (don't know her well, I liked HYimW to some extent).
So far I really like its fragmentary and chaotic flowing nature, though it occasionally stalls (she did lose me around Everyday Is-Another Dream). I must be liking long open-form albums more than before. The one artist I think of is not Laurie Anderson or Coltrane but Meredith Monk; the three work of course, as it's both composed and free. Nice chameleon of an album, it is like a cascading collage of sounds, and after a while you forget that each minute is its own little pond. Impressive. Still five tracks to go.

She ducked under the synth and gave a few of us at the front a goofy wave at one point that made me chuckle. It's a good contrast - how playful she is within the very structured pieces of music.

OTM, I found her unexpectedly playful as a live performer, too.

I put on the new LP tonight for the first time and it was kind of blowing my mind. I was distracted with work tho. Gonna have make time to listen again when I can get nice and stoned and give it my undivided attention.

Also now tempted to splurge on some fancy headphones especially for the occasion

This album is amazing. And only gets more amazing on headphones, 'tis true.

Lj, what is your beef with her? You seem to aggressively dislike her for some reason. Just wondering.

the music bores me and there's so much of it and it's so in love with itself

I had follow up questions but tbh your answer is sufficient. Diff strokes I guess?

yeah plus i listened to it all two and a half times in a row which was long enough for sentiment to calcify

How would you all rate this record in her overall catalogue? I've been dabbling in some of her older music (only having heard a few songs previously), but haven't connected with anything in quite the same way. I should probably just pick an album and listen to the whole thing.

I still prefer To Have You in My Wilderness but I think if you like her you will like them all*

*I am not an expert by any means wrt Holter

In the Same Room! It's amazing and is nothing but highlights!

finally getting properly into Have You In My Wilderness, just in time for seeing her live in a few days

i still find "Feel You" and "Sea Calls Me Home" quite awkward rhythmically and they're probably what stopped me for so long, being almost something i'd like but not quite. it turns out the rest of the album has a very similar appeal to Aviary, just less sprawling

saw her last night in sydney, so good, vastly better than the previous show i caught (2013! shit)

expanded band really delivers

kept getting robert ashley vibes - something to do with the oblique approach to vocal styling maybe? or maybe just general sense of US 80s "artiness", dunno

Report from Brooklyn: She and her band were tremendous tonight. "Aviary" translated beautifully and her older stuff sounded great as well. Go see her.

she was really wonderful when i saw her last month

Very excited for Friday. Loud City Song tour was already overwhelming to me, so I can barely imagine how this one will feel.

You're in for a treat. I love this band's use of electronics, too. Both the violinist and trumpet/fleugelhorn player use some sort of laptop based treatments for their instruments and the Prophet - 6 is also a big part of the sound.
If you love early Kate Bush and / or early solo Sylvian you should run and get a ticket. I haven't heard anyone else tap into a lot of the same artistic qualities as those particular records so well - perhaps inadvertently but who cares? Not taking away from Holter's originality as an artist but there certainly were echoes - for me - of KB, Akiko Yano's late '70s stuff, solo Sylvian with Hassell and even some Witchseason label vibes ( especially the sax playing ). Just ticks off many of my boxes when it comes to music I love.

The thing I *don't* overtly hear in her current music is the Vangelis/Alice Coltrane influences that pop up in recent interviews and press. More Sun Ra, if you ask me, when her band blows together.

I was at the BK show. Sounded incredible, producer Kenny Gilmore was on sound for it too. Yeah, blew me away, her voice live were better than on record. The Aviary stuff was great and all the old ones were beautiful too. The only time I had previously seen her was at a smaller performance near Lincoln Center where she was with a small group of violinists etc. that i don't think she had previously worked with. It was brilliant but definately more of a formal performance. Was cool to see her bring the same level of professionalism to a more casual concert setting. She's incredible, you should all see her live. Was a pretty magical experience.

seeing her monday

Yeah her live show is fantastic and joyful, and I don't even like Aviary that much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy6KJr-49ZY

Wonderful

https://www.operanorth.co.uk/news/julia-holter-to-score-the-passion-of-joan-of-arc/

Excited for this! Tickets available today for Leeds and Barbican.

Caught her, Tashi Wada, and Corey Fogel at Soup Kitchen last week and it was just wonderful soundscapes. Corey is so inventive and interesting to watch. Would really love a recording of just this trio.

I was at the same gig, loved it. nue is such an inviting record, looking fwd to another record from him

anyone see her solo set in london the other day?

https://audiotree.tv/stream/julia-holter

Finally got to see Holter perform her score for 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' with Opera North on Friday night at the Barbican in London.

This was the most painful of the pandemic postponements - and I was delighted to still have an accessible viewing after migrating South (my original tickets were for Leeds Town Hall). And after that wait, boy it did not disappoint!

They were playing along to the 2018 Criterion restoration which is just glorious - so much so I didn't watch the musicians as much as I would do normally (the attack of the bagpipes had a real shock effect!). Hopefully a recording is put out as it really deserves repeat listenings.

The new Julia / Call Super collaboration “Illumina” (seemingly not on YouTube yet) feels like something I might ultimately conclude is more interesting in theory than in practice, but the idea of it is certainly a great flex for both artists (in the “oh well of course they should collab” sense).

https://open.spotify.com/track/0k7grUcjUh67Wjiwx2H7Ka?si=qV9eEjNVT9GLCT8f-opzAA

Ooh, interesting, thanks for sharing!

I wonder if she is working on a proper new solo LP, it's been almost five years since Aviary

Test Pressing just posted the new song and said it’s from a forthcoming album.

Great track

The Alex Temple / Spektral Quartet / JH album Behind the Wallpaper is so astounding, and pretty much my album of the year so far; also sounds like total ilm candy in a way; is there any discussion on this that I've missed around here?

I didn't even know it existed, someone needs to have a chat with their PR rep

wow, thanks for the tip!

These days I feel like there's a constant stream of amazing albums that no one's heard about.

Listening to some of the vocals on the new Mary Lattimore I checked to see if it was JH, but no.

New song is a bit of a departure, quite spiky and disjointed in parts. I think I like it but giving it a few more listens before I really make up my mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsmBrWiC_94

far from a departure, listening to this gives me exactly the same frustrating experience listening to aviary did, she cannot leave a piece of music to do anything good without sabotaging its momentum, singing something faux-profound or reverting to a simple melody. the first minute and a half of this is the best bit, when it seems like it might be more interesting than it ends up, but that is often the way with her songs. i keep trying

i mean she really does seem likeable and like she's going for something interesting with an original aesthetic, i just don't know, the actual pieces of music never work for me :(

@imago Do you have a favourite piece of music (or album) by her?
Mine is still Ekstasis, although I love both Loud City Song and Have You in My Wilderness.
But I've yet to listen to Aviary - I was overwhelmed by it being a double, so I dropped the ball on it for fear of being overcomplicated. I remain very curious as to whatever she does next.

yeah I saved Maxim's I to a playlist before I really knew much about her, that one manages to go its entire length without doing something irritating. the middle bit of Les Jeux To You is really great but then it quits and starts messing about, it's so maddening

In Gardens' Muteness is also really good until she starts playing one note over and over again

Said with affection so don't take this the wrong way cos its a comment on how tastes differ rather than a personal attack, but all these descriptions of what you don't like about her music are absolutely the way I feel when I listen to most imagocore

not trying to discourage you from posting either btw, I do appreciate the way you keep giving her a listen even after so many failed attempts to connect with her music

All about personal songwriting logic-realms I suppose! Fire-Toolz recommended this new one - loads of people I trust like her!

New album March 22!

https://www.dominomusic.com/res/9xGJ/600_600/Julia_Holter_-_Something_in_the_Room_She_Moves_-_Packshot_WIG506D.jpg

Something in the Room She Moves

01 Sun Girl
02 These Morning
03 Something in the Room She Moves
04 Materia
05 Meyou
06 Spinning
07 Ocean
08 Evening Mood
09 Talking to the Whisper
10 Who Brings Me