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*

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.

Loving this album. I wasn't taken in by the individual tracks released (and maybe just wasn't in the right mood for them), but listening to it as a piece, I just kind of want to live in it. So many incredible, beautiful moments.

Nice Tape Op interview: https://tapeop.com/interviews/132/holly-herndon/

I wonder if Spawn could be realtime if she had, like, a rack of Mac Pros to throw at the problem. If so ... c'mon Holly, just head to Kickstarter! We got you!

Can we talk about how insanely awesome the Barbican show was? Full choir onstage dancing around in a creepy Midsommar fashion, apoclayptic/utopian projections onscreen, Holly dancing around and singing with the choir, vocals being manipulated in real time (which was amazing when she was singing solo). Also during Frontier there were singers located throughout the audience, suddenly getting up with spotlights on them to join in.

Plus, we all got to sing back to Holly as part of training her AI.

was also there. fckn incredible show, thought aya was really great as well.

pal i was with (who maybe lurks here, hi!) goes to london sacred harp occasionally but hadn't been in a couple of months so missed out on being one of those audience singers

really loved how much all the choral singers were just cutting lose

loose*

because i am so woke i was worried their peasant/traditional headscarves & other gear might be appropriation, lol. but yep, amazing. first song was *massive*, is it on the album (which i haven't listened to enough and can't listen to right now)?

nice, wish I could have seen this!

Saw the projections adapted to the Hexadome when it was presented as part of the Gray Area festival a couple months ago. It was fucking riveting and one of my favorite things shown.

This was one of the shows I most regretted missing out on while I was out of town in May. Very jealous of all of you.

the projections were kind of washed out by stage lighting, but I saw this show at unsound festival last week and it was great

I've seen Herndon before live and something left me a little cold, but I was in the balcony and viewing this one as a complete stage production really made it click.

New tune

pic.twitter.com/BWOh4TMwsP

— Holly Herndon (@hollyherndon) November 4, 2020

excellent

pic.twitter.com/KYvQl9TiYH

— Holly Herndon (@hollyherndon) February 13, 2021

i have no idea what any of this shit is

https://xlr8r.com/news/web3-weekly-wrap-holly-herndons-holly-fwb-gatekeeper-nft-takeover-of-times-square-and-more/

lol i knew when i clicked on this that she and her cornball charlatan partner would be on some nft shit

I've been pretty disappointed with her embracing of NFTs - in general I've always liked her takes on futurism and the potential of AI etc but the NFT thing is slowly eroding my respect.

her cornball charlatan partner

??

Mat Dryhurst. He's def a tech nerd who has been heavily involved in that side of her music. They do a podcast together (https://interdependence.fm/) that I enjoyed early on, but he's gone all in on web3/NFT stuff, I had to bail.

I still don't have an opinion about NFTs because the whole thing confuses me. So does crypto.

i assure you its bad

I always hear that thing about all the energy that's used to store NFTs and I shut down fully at that point.

Mat Dryhurst. He's def a tech nerd who has been heavily involved in that side of her music. They do a podcast together (https://interdependence.fm/) that I enjoyed early on, but he's gone all in on web3/NFT stuff, I had to bail.
― change display name (Jordan), Tuesday, 9 November 2021

Inevitable. he went on a huge diatribe the other year about piracy, and when someone pulled him up, he was like I grew up in the middle east, I was pirating video games long before they were available to the Western public - hmmm what was someone named Dryhurst('s) family doing in the middle east in the 80s-90s?

gave a lecture at Strelka - for what it's worth. Some kind of philosopher not being able to google their relationship to the russian govt...