- James Holden's journey to the centre of trance leads him to his richest, most spiritually moving music yet.
- James Holden lives for transcendence. Since "Horizons," his turn of the millennium breakout single, the English producer has been examining and deconstructing the idea of "trance" in any way he can. His last solo album, 2013's masterful The Inheritors, found Holden attempting to achieve enlightenment via knotty, off-kilter modular synth compositions. In 2014, he traveled to Marrakech with Floating Points to record with Maalem Mahmoud Guinia, a master of Moroccan Gnawa music. He then recruited an ensemble of improvisers, The Animal Spirits, for a woolly spiritual jazz transmission in 2017. Now, an entire decade since his last solo outing, he's back with Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities, his best record yet.
The album rolls through his various interests and excursions like a Katamari ball, folding all of his influences into a grand statement. Holden explores pastoral ambiance dotted with hissy field recordings, dub techno blown to smithereens by skronking saxophone and pulsating kosmische that spirals out into the distance. Compositions twist and turn, meandering through numerous genres. "Contains Multitudes," for example, begins with a lo-fi house beat before fellow Animal Spirit Camilo Tirado's tabla ushers it into a more meditative place. Holden wields his array of synthesizers like a sorcerer, conjuring spellbinding arpeggios and sequences from the ether. The whole thing plays like the trippy closing set of a shamanic rave somewhere deep in the woods. The partygoer, and Holden himself, sway with abandon, eyes closed, fully enraptured.
Though he avoids traditional techno by burying the kick drums under layers of sound, Holden still knows how to make bodies move. "Trust Your Feet" begins quietly, a shimmering melodic line nestled beneath rustling shakers. A muted drum maps out the track's pulse, subtly propelling the song forward. Once the '90s house chords appear, Holden slowly increases the resonance of the sequence, letting it bloom like saffron threads in warm water.
"Continuous Resistance," Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities's raviest number, has no discernible bass pulse but could still wreck a dance floor. Live snare rolls slither beneath Holden's undulating synth arpeggios, creating an absolutely irresistible groove. It blows apart at the end, bursting into a cloud of choral vocals and twinkling piano. From here, the album enters chillout mode, slowing the tempos to revel in dronier tunes like the psych-folk stomp of "Worlds Collide Mountains Form" and stately march of "The Answer Is Yes." This all builds to closer "You Can Never Go Back," a gorgeous and reflective piece of downtempo breakbeat.
At first, Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities may seem slightly overstuffed. Holden finds a way to incorporate an incredible amount of ideas into every piece. Many tracks end by disintegrating, which would become tough to endure if the album wasn't sequenced so perfectly. It's meant to be experienced in one fell swoop. Once the record works its magic on you, it'll be hard to pull out a single moment. Midway through writing this review, I started the first song to find a reference sound and accidentally listened to the entire thing. James Holden has made a trance masterpiece here, a transformative record full of beauty and joy, equipped to stimulate minds and bodies in equal measure.
Tracklist01. You Are In A Clearing
02. Contains Multitudes
03. Common Land
04. Trust Your Feet
05. The Missing Key
06. In The End You'll Know
07. Continuous Revolution
08. Four Ways Down The Valley
09. Worlds Collide Mountains Form
10. The Answer Is Yes
11. Infinite Fadeout
12. You Can Never Go Back