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It is a rare feeling when we switch on a CD and it feels as though we are dropping into someone else's consciousness. Incandescent (67'50") feels like the soundtrack to Hollan Holmes' inner sanctum. His fifth album, Incandescent is a sonic, sensuous interaction with the world. Its opening carries weighty expectations. Crescendoing sequencer lines roar for the sake of wonder - meant to busy quieted minds. Inch thick layers of electronic tone patterns and breaths of ethereal synthesizer swells blazon this mood of progressive convergence. These polymetric pulses and repetitive motifs are eventually absorbed into a spiral continuum of hushed reverie. As track follows track, fully we surrender - and slide quietly into the shadows. Holmes' musical thought soon brings us to a still point, a realm where Incandescent asks us to have a moment of our own. Even the most stressful may find peace here. Charged growling timbres send forth a technics of mood and atmosphere, as languorous chords churn along charged wires - eventually to touch our ears. This medium's expressive possibilities may be heard in its shifting, layered planes of sound. Inventors of drifting colors and hazy energy, Holmes' synthesizers capture feelings and a sense of motion in ways that are impossible with acoustic instruments. The harmonies have a glowing transparency and fragility, providing shimmering texture against which Holmes' message may stand out. The nine tracks on Incandescent are by turns unyielding, then hypnotic, graceful, and at last, starkly dramatic. His music hopes to trigger emotions, and wishes to awaken in us an awareness that would remain dormant without it - reminding us of the quiet that lives, often hidden, inside each one of us.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 11 February 2016 |
