Movement

An award-winning composer who as a teenager left the comfortable confines of Tennessee for Berlin's cocoon-like club culture, Holly Herndon strikes a strangely human balance between highbrow hooks and lobe-liquefying dance music on her rather brave debut record, Movement. Truth be told, the only "normal" track here is “Fade,” a through-the-looking-glass take on techno that’d make perfect sense in the middle of a heady DJ set. Everything else seems to be a study in what it means to be alive in a world of paranoid androids and laptop-tethered life forces, from the acid-splashed melodies and demonic choruses of “Movement” to the speaker-panning breathing exercises of “Terminal.” It’s no wonder that New York’s Museum of Modern Art recently asked Herndon to perform at PS1, its satellite location in Queens. Movement is a red-blooded art installation that’s a few remixes away from becoming a full-on floor-filler.