This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artists Of The Year CMU Approved
Approved 2015: Holly Herndon
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 15 December 2015
Every day this week in the CMU Approved slot, we’ll be looking at one of our five favourite artists of 2015. Today, Holly Herndon…
When 4AD signed Holly Herndon in March this year, label boss Simon Halliday told CMU that the company is “always looking to partner with the most innovative and original artists possible”. And in 2015, few others came close.
The first music from her first 4AD album ‘Platform’ actually appeared in early 2014. One of her most accessible tracks to date, ‘Chorus’ was created in part using software that ‘spied’ on her internet browsing habits and turned them into sound. So even when being more accessible, Herndon is still doing things differently.
There’s a balance throughout the album of music that is both deeply experimental and that which will work in a club setting. And while it might not pack the dancefloor on a Saturday night, applied to her own shows it really worked. Her live performances were engrossing and allowed more of her humour to come through – in part with creative partner Mat Dryhurt’s live backdrops, telling stream of consciousness stories and passing on messages from audience members invited to text in.
‘Platform’ is an experimental album that bears up to regular listening, rather than being a record that languishes, waiting for the next time you feel in the kind of very specific mood required to enjoy it. Check out ‘Interference’ and ‘Midnight Sun’ from it here:
