Bleep

In the decade since James Holden’s last solo studio album, he has totally freed himself from structure and convention, finally coming back to Earth to transmit to us a cross cultural multiverse rave DJ set. While he has certainly been active in the time since The Inheritors astounded us in 2013, naturally much has changed in those ten years. With his eponymous band on 2017’s The Animal Spirits, his eccentric techno indebted sound radically shifted to one of thunderous “hypnotic ritual musick” mixing influences from krautrock, jazz, and electronica, in between his further afield explorations of ambient / drone, film soundtracks, and Moroccan Gnawa music. Now that he’s back in the solo saddle, Holden presents all of these updated sensibilities in his latest full length journey.

As the tribal rhythms and interdimensional signal bending of the opening ‘You Are In A Clearing’ unfold, it’s clear that the title’s instruction must be taken to heart. Imagine… allows its tracks to build patiently, exploring all paths for its psychedelic, delicately embroidered threads of synth melodies, whisking the listener away on a cosmic pilgrimage to “reconnect with the feelings of hope, freedom and possibility”. It holds space for healing, then opens portals in that space for intergalactic ravers to commune, depicted in high spirited illustrations full of life and kinship in Jorge Velez AKA Professor Genius’s Moebius-inspired booklet for the physical formats.

The album imagines a more utopian version of the free parties in the UK’s golden rave era, casting out oppressive policies and unwelcoming attitudes. Veer off the motorway to find the secluded forest dancefloor, advertised by pirate radio stations galaxy-wide to show us where these potential spaces could exist and collide with each other. That far reaching ethos is represented in much of the album’s open world builds, wide pans of the olivine plains sounded out by repetitive bright passages.

Not only is it a manifestation of the Peace Love Unity Respect motto that has been the mission statement of rave since the 90s, but a recognition of how dance music has woven itself throughout centuries into human culture and the landscape itself. “Dance music is folk music,” Holden says. “The way we share it; how it brings people together; the way ideas evolve in it, with people doing versions of other’s songs, that’s a really folk music thing; and mainly, the way in which a community can develop that doesn’t have to be a capitalist-entertainment-complex.”

This sonic odyssey manifests in the spaces each song evokes: the glaciers of ‘In The End You’ll Know’, where spectral flutters glittering and expanding until they crack with liquid synths spilling out, or the sharp, raw folk of ‘Worlds Collide Mountains Form’ where warm surges of pastoral violins and jagged guitar twangs trace rays of daylight arching across plains. ‘Common Land’ meanwhile climbs down to a kaleidoscopic E2-E4 like vortex, with dusky dub beats and lush saxophone lost in an infinite dawn chorus.

‘Contains Multitudes’ is perhaps the album’s most adventurous mission, never once losing its momentum as it mercurially moves from lighthearted pearly breaks to dramatic, jazzy washes. Its deep subs contrast against the dolphin whistles of buzzing synth sparks flying all around, bubbling with piano chords that explore every scale and phasing in and out of constant evolution.

James Holden bends electrical arcs into mesmerising wavelets, creates reverent breakbeats for alien beings, and constructs sand, air, and fire from synthesis alone. His fourth studio album is an epic collage of all these energies, culminating on his history as an artist so far.