Published
Tue, Mar 26, 2013, 12:02
- Seven years on from The Idiots Are Winning, the Border Community boss will release a second album in June.
James Holden will release his second album, The Inheritors, through Border Community in June.
Named after a William Golding book, the album was crafted using Holden's analogue modular system and hand-coded computer programs, which he used to build a series of unique analogue-digital machines. The producer describes these machines as "complex, unpredictable beasts whose sole purpose was to be an expressive instrument for me to play a single song." He added: "There is something very Heath Robinson about the machines I build. Chaos systems with stable states and unstable states, modulating themselves as I fight to steer them. Everything is first takes. It was all a moment. It's recorded like folk music—no overdubs, no virtuosity. A man learnt some instruments to a basic standard and played them. Where needed, he sang."
In a press release, Holden cites the music of Elgar and the KLF's Chill Out as reference points for the LP, as well as "ceilidh music, pentatonic folk scales, and ancient pagan rituals." The Border Community boss also said: "In dance music you're face to face with redundant, pointless music the whole time—records that don't need to exist because every part of them already exists elsewhere. Maybe the same everywhere. I wanted to make the opposite and try to find my own successful combinations and strategies. That part-explains the long gestation I guess. But what would be the point of doing anything else? The album is not meant to sound like now, but it's not meant to sound like the past either."
Holden plays all instruments and provides the vocals on The Inheritors, with two exceptions: a saxophone cameo from Zombie Zombie's Etienne Jaumet on "The Caterpillar’s Intervention" and a vocal turn by Shimble on "Circle of Fifths." The album will be preceded by a 12-inch single version of "Gone Feral" on April 8th. You can download the track for free over on the Border Community SoundCloud page.
Border Community will release The Inheritors by James Holden on June 17th, 2013.