Holly Herndon ‎– Proto

holly-herndon-%e2%80%8e-proto-ok

CD – 4AD

In her previous two albums – Movement and Platform – Holly Herndon has already demonstrated her vocal control in a very original and structured way, despite the use of distortions, effects and extreme edits. She was perfectly able to negotiate the space between an extreme conceptualism and the kind of beats typical of club style. It’s also clear that the final destination should have been different, considering her studies with figures such as John Bischoff, James Fei, Maggi Payne and Fred Frith. However, after being deeply rooted to the German metropolis, the temptation to remain within a style close to techno might have been very strong. But things went differently. For some time now the cosmopolitan experimenter has considered a laptop to be a natural expression of her body and mind. Her voice is her most powerful tool of expression: as a courageous and natural result, she chose to make everything more complex and unpredictable, by adding a choral ensemble to the mix. The artist highlights that technology is not a dehumanizing agent: clearly, she wants to prove this not only with words, but by adding to the choir many cuts, compressions and vocal tricks she usually performs with. However, the real difference in the making of Proto consists in the design and in the management of Spawn, an artificial intelligence agent she customized together with Mathew Dryhurst and the programmer Jules LaPlace. The software literally learned to recognise, interpret and re-elaborate any voice using neural networks to set all the musical chains. All the vocal elements are completely deconstructed and the possible combinations multiply themselves out of all proportion. Herndon’s shaker blends echoes of Bulgarian voices, electronic gothic, ecclesiastical songs and murmurs of Laurie Anderson, together with solemn tones and synthetic sentimentalism. The digital strict logic and the human sensitivity give together life to a new awareness. Holly Herndon uses sound as a raw material and sets a narrative aesthetics, by giving to Spawn the ductility and the reaction capacity typical of a performer. This is a fundamental album and the starting point of a new era.

 

Holly Herndon ‎– Proto