Electronic explorer James Holden is back with a new album called Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities, arriving on March 31 through Border Community. Regarding his mindset in making the record, he says:
“I wanted this to be my most open record, uncynical, naive, unguarded, the record teenage me wanted to make. I used to balance my clock-radio on a wardrobe to catch the faint pirate FM signals from the nearest city, dreaming of what raves would be like when I could finally escape and become a New Age traveller.”
The first track to be shared from the record is “Contains Multitudes”, with Holden saying:
“I’d been looking at John Stezaker’s collages, where things collide and it feels like it opens a window into them, thinking a lot about musical approaches to that idea, then the end part of this just appeared in my head as I listened to the loops of the beginning part. The two songs are opposite musics but also completely contained inside one another.”
True to its name and the process of its creation, “Contains Multitudes” enters and exits many sonic wormholes as it unspools across nearly 10 minutes. It sets out as a minimal electronic track, filled with gentle energy, subtly morphing into a lackadaisical rave tune beamed across the universe from an uknown society in search of kinship; it soon has you in its command as you fall into its uncommon sway. Around halfway, a whole new galaxy of sound gradually swallows the song, taking us into more jazz-adjacent realms with piano dancing away beneath the electronic loops, taking our imaginations to new realms of delight and intrigue.
Check out “Contains Multitudes” below or find it on streamers.
James Holden’s new album Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities arrives on March 31 through Border Community. You can find him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
He’s also announced a special live date at London’s EartH on April 13 – tickets on his official website.
