i want a thread for Holly Herndon

*hides in Rockist Corner with pomenitul and other sticks-in-the-mud who still believe in old-fashioned nonsense like songwriting while the A E S T H E T I C crowd storm the cultural pantheon*

I'm a shameless aesthete but to these ears it comes off as an interminable string of platitudinous highs.

we're all aesthetes - there's a whole specific thing. you have to space the capitals

I thought that was a vapourware meme, though – does HH qualify? I must know!

*wave, sorry.

It sounds amazing. It doesn't exactly make me want to listen to it again or use it in a dj set (although maybe for the right moment?), but still. It's just vocals, drums, and stabs, right?

Sounds like something Kanye will probably sample this year.

awesome
a welcome return

Save me I'm trending

— Holly Herndon (@hollyherndon) March 11, 2019

(Theresa May saved her after an hour or so by jumping on a plane to Strasbourg)

One of my happiest gig-going memories is of the time when Holly had hooked her laptop to the projector and slowly and very purposefully typed 'FUCK THERESA MAY' over the visuals in lurid pink.

Also this song is incredible, it's like a School of Seven Bells song batting around in a metal box.

herndon can write a song imo

anyway this fucking rules

Herndon might be the only person in any discipline doing anything worthwhile with AI

anyway besides sounding incredible this is clearly A Song with hooks and stuff and not just some installation piece

It's a song, for sure, I'm just not sold on her way with melody. Faux-bliss imho.

One excellent reason to use AI in your art is that it guarantees press/interest

There are way more traditional songwriting chops in Holly Herndon tracks than in half of the stuff imago listens to so I've got no fucking idea what he's talking about (also HH != vape so strike 2).

This bangs.

The only thing that kept me from truly diving headfirst into Holly Herndon when I first became aware of her was the videos, which I was unmoved by, but this video is AMAZING-- same director as the stuff I wasn't so keen on, the song rules as always

My mistake, the video that rubbed me wrong was a different director whups

She really should have done the soundtrack to the live action Ghost in the Shell. I hear a lot of Kenji Kawai here.

oh this is very cool, i've never really been able to get into her work before but this has pushed into pop-enough territory for me to love it

uhhhhhhhhh this is so good

i don't mean that there's no songwriting, i mean that the songwriting completely fails to engage me and there are no hooks or melodies that do anything for me even if the sound design is quite cool. this is a defensible position surely

*hides in Rockist Corner with pomenitul and other sticks-in-the-mud who still believe in old-fashioned nonsense like songwriting while the A E S T H E T I C crowd storm the cultural pantheon*

That's not "I don't like it", that's "it doesn't exist".

there are no hooks or melodies that do anything for me

See, usually you stop before adding the "that do anything for me" part, which is what I find annoying. I don't mind when you don't like things that I like, I just mind when you critique things as if you have a trained musicologist's eye and have found something objectively lacking in it. Personally I find her hooks and melodies v engaging and often properly moving, but there you go.

Wow, this is good

I'm getting links to this from all channels in my little bubbleworld, I can't believe the video has only 20k views?!?? Anyway this track is amazing.

heart in my mouth by the end of this one

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

Immediately thought of the intro to this when I heard it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7USaAO0vEOE

I thought of this (4 mins in):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De3cWcjZ0Q0&t=240

epic song

was coming here to post "Frontier," really gorgeous tune. can't stop listening to it.

gotta say, it was really lovely knowing Holly and Mat during their time in the Bay Area— they are genuinely wonderful, warm, and funny people. that they're both making such bonkers-good stuff is just icing on the cake. (same goes for EMA and few other folks from that period of my life).

I've been thinking about the whole choral feel of these new tracks, even if Holly's is the only voice on the record, and this is fascinating:

It's cool that people are getting Bulgarian vibes from Frontier :) What is crazy about these kind of polyphonic vocalisations is that they appear in geographically distinct areas all over the world.

— Holly Herndon (@hollyherndon) May 7, 2019

Basically this record is going to be incredible.

Yeah I can't remember the last time I was this excited about a new album release. Syro, I guess - but I have the feeling this album will be better.

Drums could be better... there’s something about the way they sound it makes me think of a tacky “cirque du soleil”/broadway kind of soundtrack - horns on “eternal” also give me those vibes - but love what she does with the vocals and how primal it feels at times. Reminds me of Fever Ray’s s/t of all things.

As usual, the song sounds like it's going to be the best thing ever, then doesn't quite go where it could. This one sounds particularly cool though so it probably gets away with it

album's out

SWIM is pretty great

Sounds kind of messy on first listen. Lots of ideas, not sure they go anywhere particularly interesting.

SWIM is the song that heralds us into post-Evangelion new consciousness

This sounded pretty incredible on first listen

Roomful of teethish in places

love that video for Frontier

this album ranges from 'extremely compelling' to 'kind of interesting i guess but doesnt really work and i never want to listen to it again'

really digging SWIM

The album is definitely stronger than Platform. I always skip the sound art pieces on that ('wet bar wax', etc), the ones here are mostly more palatable.

Got tickets for her Barbican show in October, bravely hoping i'll be allowed a night off from our 3 year old and 3 month old.

^ Holly reblogged some IG stories of her recent live shows in which I became entirely fixated on fact that there was a child in the audience -- and I confidently say that as audience members surrounding gave the kid and her dad like a 3ft radius

Surprised how bright and clear the album is, it's gorgeous. And it bumps.

Would have loved to have seen her show here the other night but it was up against Downtown Boys, who I already had tickets for. Next time.