What do you think of when you hear something described as “academic”? Hands up if you thought of some musty old professor in a book-lined office or a be-spectacled scientist in a long, white lab coat. It would seem that you’re unlikely to think of anything exciting, fresh or raw. It’s perhaps odd then that Holly Herndon’s debut album, Movement, has been so routinely described as “academic” because it is one of the most exciting records of recent memory, especially when it comes to the completely sodden and over-worked, under-inspired field of vocal processing.
As chance would have it, Herndon is an academic. She is currently pursuing a doctorate in experimental music at Stanford University, which is about as academic as it’s possible for a musician to get. So in this case, is it the context, the back story, that makes the music “academic”?
If you listen to Movement (and you can do so, for another few days, over on NPR), you’ll hear that the music is certainly experimental and often wonderfully obtuse. The album opens with ‘Terminal’, where quiet blasts of white noise are suspended over the loudest silences, gradually filled by an influx of inhuman noises and the barest hints of voice. It is a strange but compelling way to spend eight minutes of your time and headphones are recommended. Second track, and first single, ‘Fade’ shows just why people are getting so excited about this album. ‘Fade’ is track where Herndon links her voice, abstract sound and crushing beats, tying her academic background to her years as a DJ in Berlin and finding something entirely new in the combination.
‘Fade’ pretty much doesn’t sound like anyone else. As a comparison there are parts of Bjork’s discography that aren’t too far off the mark, especially when she went full on with the beats, and there might be elements of The Knife in there, again mostly in the beat itself.
Neither Bjork or The Knife are ever likely to be described as “academic”, Darwinian operas set in the Amazon or not. Bjork particularly comes from a punk background and that punk sensibility can perhaps be felt (or imagined) in even her most abstract works. She seems mostly interested in breaking down complex ideas and programs so that they can be used and understood by anyone, an idea which took its clearest shape yet with Biophilia‘s set of accompanying apps. She has always interpreted “high” culture and presented it in “pop” culture form. Hence, she is a global pop star.
(Nobody really knows what to make of The Knife and that’s probably exactly the way they like it so, for now, global pop star status eludes the duo. It will be interesting to see what their new album does though, seeing as how influential their last two have been.)
Herndon certainly does little on Movement to present her music in a radio-friendly or even club-friendly format. Only ‘Fade’ and the title track really drop the beats that have people linking her to techno. Tracks like ‘Control And’, ‘Interlude’ and ‘Dilato’ see her vocal processing at its most abstract, using the voice and little else to generate odd tones and echoes, swirling across the stereo field in a way sure to please any computer music professor. But it’s this vocal presence, the fact that the human is always at the centre of the machine, pressed and misshapen by digital destruction in an unnerving mix of blood and circuitry, which shows that Herndon’s music and techno share more than an aesthetic bond.
Movement is a re-imagination of the future Kraftwerk and the guys in Detroit foresaw and it was made with cutting-edge technology. Rather than referencing techno history with a particular sought-after drum machine or recognisable bass pattern, Herndon remakes their vision of the mechanised future with new tools, inspired clean rooms full of computers and smart devices linking us to each other rather than endless human production lines in dystopian auto factories.
Maybe “academic” just means having to dive below the surface before you can see what’s really going on.
