Platform

You couldn't exactly describe Holly Herndon's second album as a collection of club bangers. Berlin's techno scene inspired her foray into technology-obsessed electronic music, but Platform takes a futuristic step beyond your average Eurotrance rave - imagine a robot-party playlist peppered with warped, processed vocals and jittery cascades of sub-bass frequencies and you're not far off. In a recent Guardian interview, Herndon described the laptop as a "hyper-emotional instrument"; she turns cold, lifeless synthetic beats into disconcerting, disjointed rhythms that glitch and collapse on each other in the style of FKA Twigs producer Arca, Aphex Twin or Maria Minerva. Lovers of ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) - the pleasurable, brain-tingling sensations that are triggered in some people by certain rustling, ticking or whispering sounds - will shiver with excitement hearing Lonely at the Top, while centrepiece Home tackles the impact of the NSA revelations with echoey vocals and bass thuds. Banger-free, perhaps, but gloriously avant garde and fiercely inventive. - The Guardian