JAMES HOLDEN

THE INHERITORS

James Holden has released hardly any music of his own since his first album, 2006's The Idiots Are Winning, but he hasn't been a wallflower either. Besides continuing to pluck new talent for his label, Border Community—which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year—he released one of the more deranged editions in the DJ-Kicks series with his 2010 entry of sun-blazed krautrock and pastoral electronica. But still, seven years since his last major body of work, it's safe to say that ears pricked up earlier this spring when word that emerged that he had a new album in the works.

And what a return it is. Named after a novel by William Golding, The Inheritors quickly bewitches with an audio headspace that's very much Holden's own. If there's anything in his past that bears the sonic identifiers on display here, it's the wobbly analogue bliss-outs of his DJ-Kicks rather than the neo-trance at the heart of The Idiots or his famous "A Break In The Clouds." Forged from single takes on his modular synth with no overdubs, The Inheritors has the blurry, delirious effect of an eighty-minute heatstroke. Holden's described some of the work here as a new kind of rave music, one that alludes to ancient English historical practices, continue read full article at RA

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