XOYO, London
Typical of the laptop musician’s dextrous juxtapositions, this was a hi-tech show full of organic sounds and human expression
Holly Herndon’s music is cinematic, but not in the Lynchian or bombastic way that the word is usually employed to denote. It has the stuttering energy of stop-motion footage built from thousands of photographs: synth figures jerk into sight then skitter off, bass notes stun like the flash of a camera, rhythms surprise as they speed and slow. It’s typical of this San Francisco-based composer’s dexterity with juxtaposition that the actual film projected across the back of the stage conveys other rhythms entirely, its swirling images more giddy than propulsive.
Performed at a bank of laptops, Herndon’s music could come across as alien and denatured, were it not for her fascination with bodies and organic matter. Her mouth is almost constantly at a microphone, producing murmurs, gasps and clicks; the more she dislocates the sound from the movement of her lips, processes and warps it, the more mesmerising those movements become. Prominent in the sound range are the ominous whip of helicopter rotor blades, metallic glitches and the shattering of glass; prominent in the backdrop imagery are microscopic closeups of corn on the cob and iceberg lettuce. This is a woman with a deft sense of humour.
by Maddy Costa via Electronic music | The Guardian
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