JAMES HOLDEN - IMAGINE THIS IS A HIGH DIMENSIONAL SPACE OF ALL POSSIBILITIES

Released: 31/03/23

Ignore the title's whiff of ‘first year undergrad just dropped acid for the first time’, for British avant-IDM mainstay James Holden’s follow up to his excellent The Animal Spirits (which he has described as “something like a spiritual jazz band playing folk/trance music”) is, at its core, a relentlessly optimistic homage to rave. This is James Holden we’re taking about, however, and so the tracks are less The Ragga Twins and Top Buzz, and more the acid-inflected beauty of early µ-Ziq and Aphex Twin, such as the nine-minute-plus tour-de-force that is ‘Contains Multitudes' – which may be the only EDM track to reference Walt Whitman. Elsewhere there are some lovely field recording collages in the manner of The KLF’s Chill Out, and Future Sound of London-esque radioscapes. Oh, and it also comes with a 12-page colour booklet of original illustrations by the brilliant Jorge Velez. Mindfully bangin’.