Platform

Description

4AD release Platform, the new album by American artist Holly Herndon.

Holly Herndon has become a leading light in contemporary alternative and electronic music by fearlessly experimenting within the outer reaches of dance music and pop songwriting structures.

A galvanizing statement, Platform cements Herndons reputation as a unique musician with a singular voice. Born in Tennessee but reared on music abroad, Herndon broke out from her formative years in Berlins minimal techno scene to repatriate to San Francisco, where she currently lives and studies as a doctoral candidate at Stanfords Center For Computer Research In Music And Acoustics (CCRMA).

To achieve Platform, Herndon has opened up her process to vital artists and thinkers from her creative circle, including radical Dutch design studio Metahaven and digital DIY artist Mat Dryhurst, leading by example to tackle a host of topics ranging from systemic inequality, surveillance states, and neofeudalism. Platform underscores the need for new fantasies and strategic collective action.

Herndons debut album Movement, released in 2012, showcased her fascination with trance and the disjunctive sampling techniques pioneered by avant-garde composition. Subsequent singles Chorus and Home (rolled out in advance of Platform) humanized the laptop by celebrating its capacity for memory storage and lamenting its vulnerability in light of revelations of mass surveillance.

Offering what Herndon describes as a rupture, a paradisic gesture, Platform is an optimistic breakthrough for Herndon, an appeal for progress and a step toward new ways to love.