This is a pandemic dance record like no other. At the start of his career, British producer James Holden skewed trance, then techno, garnering acclaim for his remixes. He has since spent two fascinating albums exploring different paths to flow states, increasingly incorporating analogue instruments, cosmic jazz and Moroccan gnawa, while still adapting his own analogue synth rigs.
His fourth album returns to the dancefloor, integrating all that has gone before. Too young for the illicit sound system era, Holden has created the vintage rave soundtrack he wishes had existed when he was a teenager, dreaming of free party transcendence. It’s a sense of yearning mirrored by the album’s creation during the scary days of lockdown when musicians’ incomes evaporated.
