On Repeat: 'Frontier' by Holly Herndon
Tristan Young @talltristan
EP 30 of the BORP is a special one in no small part because we feature one of the most fascinating tracks in a long time. The artist is Holly Herndon, the album is Proto. Proto is no mere experimental electronic album, but rather the acutely rendered shape of things to come. In Proto, Herndon constructed a nascent neural network AI dubbed Spawn to not just process music, but to listen, learn, interpret, and create. The implications and potential of such a project will likely not fully be understood for a great while. Forget the future of music, this is the future. The true standout of Proto is the staggering and omnipresent ‘Frontier’. This is a track that could be pulled from the climax of Akira, with all the existential grandeur that implies. It begins with haunting, even terrifying incantatory spells and chants. The towering presence of the choir’s mammoth howls, “Their world is long gone, a leap or push, a path of love or blood, break from the past or a hunt”, is absolutely mesmerizing. This is some of the most exciting writing of the year, heavily emphatic over the future- or lack there of- of our culture and our species. In gorgeously poetic and no uncertain terms it commands us to address the eventual doom of climate change. Herndon and her choir, a composite of tribalism and tech-horror, urges the generations to come to make drastic, even devastating changes to how we exist. As animalistic percussion races forward the cult like screaming is layered over itself again and again to create a stunning sense of depth; like something deep from the earth’s prehistoric core ferociously reaching up to the future. Some of the shrieks are of monolithic design, others contorted in writhing agony. It all melds into one of the most affecting sonic sequences this year. ‘Frontier’ is a brilliant synthesis of intimidation and inspiration. It is a warning and a rallying cry, a galvanizing example of the far past and distant future existing in exquisite equilibrium. One wonders if the present can join as ‘Frontier’ offers its central thesis, one it demands we consider- “This earth doesn’t care what we need, what we breath, a frontier of green or of dust”