Staff Reviews

Holly Herndon - Platform

Review by Benjamin Bland

This is digital age avant-garde sound art put through a pop prism»

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Platform' is the new album by American artist Holly Herndon. Holly Herndon has become a leading light in contemporary alternative and electronic music by fearlessly experimenting within the outer reaches of dance music and pop songwriting structures. A galvanizing statement, 'Platform' cements Herndon's reputation as a unique musician with a singular voice. Born in Tennessee, but reared on music abroad, Herndon broke out from her formative years in Berlin's minimal techno scene to repatriate to San Francisco, where she currently lives and studies as a doctoral candidate at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). To achieve Platform, Herndon has opened up her process to vital artists and thinkers from her creative circle, including radical Dutch design studio Metahaven and digital DIY artist Mat Dryhurst, leading by example to tackle a host of topics ranging from systemic inequality, surveillance states, and neo-feudalism. Platform underscores the need for new fantasies and strategic collective action. Herndon's debut album 'Movement', released in 2012, showcased Herndon's fascination with trance and the disjunctive sampling techniques pioneered by avant-garde composition. Subsequent singles 'Chorus' and 'Home', rolled out in advance of 'Platform', humanized the laptop by celebrating its capacity for memory storage and lamenting its vulnerability in light of revelations of mass surveillance. Offering what Herndon describes as "a rupture, a paradisic gesture", 'Platform' is an optimistic breakthrough for Herndon, an appeal for progress, and a step toward new ways to love.
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