6. James HoldenImagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities
Every time James Holden makes another record I think ‘this is the best he’s ever done’. I can’t imagine him doing anything better and then he just does something else and blows my mind. I love his approach to things. He’s this amazing raving space hippie, and I don’t feel like there’s anyone else out there like that.
He’s a bit of a magician. He’s made his own laptop. He makes all his own synthesisers. He’s obviously a terrifyingly bright guy. I think even bought a 3D modelling thing he could use to build the outer casings for stuff, and he just works in a very unconventional way. He comes from originally being a superstar Ibiza club DJ, and then it just moved very much in the other direction over time and the music seemed to do the same thing and the records became looser and looser, and the time signatures became freer, and the noises got weirder, and the tracks got longer. I love watching it slowly unravel in this amazing way. Every time he releases anything, I get so excited about what on earth he will have done, and I’m always wondering in between his records what he’s up to, where he is and what he’s concocting. I saw him play live with the new album and it is dance music, it is rave music, but in an old-school, crusty way rather than ripped dudes dancing to 4/4 beats – it’s in fields rather than in beautiful nightclubs with amazing lighting. Moonlight raving, I guess. I really like the whole idea behind the album as well, the idea of taking back land. Why can’t we party in the fields which rich people use to go and shoot pheasant? I think his outlook on the world is one which I can align with And for all that it’s saying ‘this is where we could have been and this is what we’ve had taken from us’, it’s still a very hopeful and euphoric record. I listen to it in a hopeful way. It makes me feel fabulous. I listen to it when I go running and things and I have it playing almost constantly, and I feel like some of that spirit is coming back to the moment. I live in Stroud, which is very that anyway, but that energy, outdoor partying and things getting a bit looser and a bit freer, I hope that he’s leading us back into a kind of different counterculture.
