Julia Holter

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"