Laptop-based composer whose music comments on how technology and humanity affect each other in unsettling and affecting ways.

Holly Herndon has become a leading light in contemporary alternative and electronic music by fearlessly experimenting within the outer reaches of dance music and pop songwriting structures. A galvanizing statement, Platform cements Herndon's reputation as a unique musician with a singular voice.

Born in Tennessee, but reared on music abroad, Herndon broke out from her formative years in Berlin's minimal techno scene to repatriate to San Francisco, where she currently lives and studies as a doctoral candidate at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA).

To achieve Platform, Herndon has opened up her process to vital artists and thinkers from her creative circle, including radical Dutch design studio Metahaven and digital DIY artist Mat Dryhurst, leading by example to tackle a host of topics ranging from systemic inequality, surveillance states, and neo-feudalism. Platform underscores the need for new fantasies and strategic collective action.

Herndon's debut album Movement, released in 2012, showcased Herndon's fascination with trance and the disjunctive sampling techniques pioneered by avant-garde composition. Subsequent singles ‘Chorus’ and ‘Home’, rolled out in advance of Platform, humanized the laptop by celebrating its capacity for memory-storage and lamenting its vulnerability in light of revelations of mass surveillance.   

Offering what Herndon describes as "a rupture, a paradisic gesture", Platform is an optimistic breakthrough for Herndon, an appeal for progress, and a step toward new ways to love.

Following on from their treatment for ‘Home’, Metahaven have collaborated once more with Herndon on a video for Platform opener ‘Interference’, which airs today.

Platform is Holly Herndon’s debut album for 4AD, a cooperative effort with RVNG Intl., the NYC imprint with whom Herndon has worked for many years and released her first record Movement.