In a recent interview with the British magazine FACT, Holly Herndon refuted the trope that electronic music is the stuff of impersonal and inhuman androids. The Tennessee native bought into that narrative herself while living in the electronic hub of Berlin, where, though she played with a band named Electrocute, she began taking contrabass lessons. Her hope was that if she could master a "real instrument," she might, one day, be taken seriously as a composer. But after returning stateside to study at the electronic sanctum of California's Mills College, she realized that her laptop-- a web of code and a fountain of sound-- could make music as personal, intimate, and important as that of any ensemble. "This is actually the most interesting instrument for me," she told FACT. "I also think that it's the most personal instrument that the world has ever seen."
Many people might balk at that idea, that a computer is somehow a more personal instrument than the customary acoustic toolset of music. After all, how can a box of wires, circuits, and chips connected to a screen and controlled by fingers be more individual than a guitar, with its strings simply pressed by fingers, or, better yet, the human voice, the sound of someone simply singing? But, to an extent, computers are forever malleable, able to be programmed and reprogrammed to fit needs and whims and, in turn, to alter those old modes of expression in ways that they couldn't do themselves. On her proper full-length debut Movement, the California-based composer uses her crystalline voice as a chief input for her laptop, ultimately arriving at a poignant nexus of electronic accessibility and experimentation that owes as much to her academic forebears as her club contemporaries. It's a record with the rare capacity to turn cynics who might scoff at the idea of laptops-as-intimate-instruments into believers.
It seems overly convenient and coincidental to compare Herndon's Movement to Laurel Halo's Quarantine. Here are, after all, two American women releasing records in the same year that weave their respective voices into intricate electronic music that sits at the borders of pop, dance, and more esoteric forms. The links are reductive enough to be insulting. But both Movement and Quarantine are bold records, dependent upon a multiplicity of voices from one source to press against borders of populist versus experimental media-- or, better yet, to unite them. At times, both Halo and Herndon seem like would-be popular sirens, ready to deliver hooks to the radio; at other points, however, they seem destined for careers of gigs in small art spaces or extended fellowships at universities. But at their best, they seem like both and neither, composers and thinkers unafraid to elide convention, circumvent categorization and arrive, fully formed, at an intersection of things often thought to be mutually exclusive.
Movement's humanity stems in part from its variety of moods. At times overtly playful and slyly sexual, decidedly monastic and obviously extroverted, these seven pieces skip between feelings with a true-to-life mercurialness and unpredictability. Herndon's sonics are impressive; see the subdural bass moans of opener "Terminal" or the careful, Oval-like slices of "Control And" for proof. But she never betrays the soul of her music for the sound of it. During "Breathe", for instance, Herndon takes a series of deep breaths and scrambles the patterns of inhalation and exhalation. She splits the actions across the channels, conjuring an unlikely choir of dissonance and consonance. Sonically, it's impressive enough, but emotionally, it portrays the struggle to rise above the world's din, to stay centered in a bustle of hyperactivity. It's electronic Zen: Herndon successfully links an electroacoustic premise to a pragmatic observation.
Especially considering that this is her first LP, Herndon's ability to steer music that's simultaneously complex and approachable is astounding: "Fade", for instance, should lure fans of the Knife with its iterative keyboards and sticky arctic hook, but the structure-- or, more specifically, the way Herndon handles the beat in relation to her voice-- is a marvel all its own. Herndon frames the rhythm with her voice, syllables darting between its cracks like water washing through rivulets. But that's just the most superficial layer of Herndon's voice. Underneath the hook, samples of her singing crisscross beneath the beat, supplying counterrhythms and serving like little magnets that draw the listener deeper into the song with each pass. It's a perfect interface of machine and user and of intricate composition with irrepressible songcraft. Likewise, though the noisy 64-second track "Interlude" might seem ostracizing at first, it plays out like a miniature video game of voices. Herndon manipulates her own tone into blips and volleys that clash with one another in their own electronic Mortal Kombat. It's quixotic, a dose of levity in a field not known for it.
"Dilato", the brilliant closer, is the only track that doesn't key on Herndon’s voice. Instead, she samples and stretches the patient intonations of classical baritone Bruce Rameker, pulling his syllables until they turn into a brooding, wordless chorus. The piece is Movement's most unapologetically academic; it treats speech with such force that it recalls Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room, in which the composer repeatedly played back and recorded a tape of himself reading text in a room until his speech hummed into howling oblivion. But listen closely for Herndon's own voice, which joins Rameker's most notably just before the three-minute mark. She harmonizes with him for a moment, singing one syllable with an operatic grandeur. It's over in an instant, but it's enough to reiterate Herndon's symbiotic thesis and to make "Dilato" feel like much more than a rote exercise in bending one person's voice into phantasmagorias.
Appropriately named, Movement feels like a progression and challenge from one of the year's most exciting new voices, producers, and composers. It's an invitation by example to move in several circles at once and emerge with something that’s brazen, fresh, and entirely individual.
