Holly Herndon

Listening to Holly Herndon feels like watching a high-resolution digital render of a human face slowly dissolve into geometric data points. It is music that exists at the bleeding edge of technology, where the warmth of the human voice is fed through custom-built software to create something entirely new. The sound is often dense and overwhelming, yet possessed of a crystalline clarity that makes every digital glitch and vocal fragment feel intentional and surgically placed.

What sets Herndon apart is her commitment to 'embodied' electronics. Instead of using synthesizers to mimic traditional instruments, she uses the computer as an extension of the body, specifically the voice. Her work with AI, particularly on the album Proto, involves training neural networks to sing alongside human ensembles, resulting in a strange, uncanny valley beauty that is both alien and deeply communal. It is the sound of the future being built in real-time.

For those new to her work, the album Proto is the definitive starting point. It perfectly balances her academic rigor with accessible, albeit strange, pop sensibilities. Tracks like 'Eternal' showcase her ability to create massive, soaring anthems out of fragmented data, while 'Godmother' pushes the boundaries of what a 'vocal' performance can even be in the age of machine learning.