"Imagine This is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities" by James Holden

An expansive, psychedelic exploration of electronic music's past and future.

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Welcome to a new edition of the Daily Music Picks newsletter!

Today’s music pick is a cinematic exploration of what happens when electronic modulation turns psychedelic.

Genre: Electronic, Experimental

Label: Border Community Recordings

Release Date: March 31, 2023

Vibe: 🧘

You won’t find a more on-the-nose and, somehow, more accurate album title surface in 2023 than James Holden’s Imagine This Is a High Dimensional Space of All Possibilities. It’s as much an ode to the rave culture of yesteryear (think progressive and/or acid house like 808 State) as it is a psychedelic mining of our collective consciousness coming out of a global pandemic, with some free jazz accents thrown in for good measure. As a result, it’s hard to put Holden’s sound in a definitive category, which is a compliment. The sonics are probably too mellow to whip an underground warehouse party into a frenzy but it’s also not without grooves that seep into your pores and prevent you from sititng still. This is rhythmic experimentation at its finest, full of intriguing textural surprises around every corner.

Take “Common Land” as Exhibit A. It starts out as if a folk-tronic instrumental collided with a nature documentary, all echoing synth lines and bird chirps. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he drops in a beat and, before long, you’ve transitioned into a layered dance track that quickly gets you into a trance-like state. By the time the saxophone is added to the mix, you feel less like you’re at a rave and more like you’re communing with the natural world hinted at in its title. Ditto for standouts “Worlds Collide Mountains Form” and closer “You Can Never Go Back,” which make moving your body to the music a zen-like experience. As Holden told Mixmag, “That common land out there should be for everybody and if you can rave on it without hurting anyone, then that should be possible.”

As we leave the shut-in lifestyle in the rearview for good, those words, in concert with this album, are oddly comforting.

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