It’s credit to Holly Herndon’s skill as a musical guide that her third album, though up to its elbows in complex ideas, feels so invigorating. Her boldest attempt yet to reconfigure modern dilemmas musical, technological and philosophical, it looks back, finding inspiration in the church choirs of her youth, and leaps forward, with a self-designed “AI baby” called Spawn – no android overlord, but just another member of her ensemble.
Spawn’s efforts are gritty and glitchy on the likes of Birth, words stuttered out against a shimmer-curtain of chorused voices, and Godmother, the AI’s jitteringly percussive take on the work of Herndon’s collaborator JLin. The rawness, as well as the voices – Spawn’s staple diet – are a reminder of Proto’s human heart, breaking down false binaries between people and their technology, urging active engagement. But this is not just a historical document. It’s an album of dizzying, spiritual, science-fact beauty and bracing beats, from the hymnal-rave drama of Alienation to the alternately harrowing and heavenly Crawler., with its refrain of “Why am I so lost?” The continuity stressed between body and tool, folk history and future, like the work of Meredith Monk or Björk, lures the listener away from the twin traps of techno-evangelist complacency and technophobic retreat with sweet inspiration.
