Live Review: Holly Herndon, Sui Zhen

Sui Zhen kickstarts tonight's entertainment on a sizeable rig of synthesisers. Dealing tunes from her latest album, Losing Linda, Zhen works up a luscious pop vibe dealing in themes of technology and its effect on relationships, memories and identity, both real and imagined. There are natural thematic links between her work and Holly Herndon’s but where Herndon tends toward wild experimentation, Zhen’s reflective tunes come packed with good old-fashioned hooks and groove that has bounce.

Holly Herndon had a lot of people talking about her use of artificial intelligence in creating her last album Proto, which was released last year. It’s a move that seems to have earned her an enviable reputation as a trailblazer of experimental electronic music. While Spawn, Herndon’s AI software collaborator, isn’t quite ready to perform live, the music of Proto is brought to life by a chorus of vocalists that include Herndon, Albertine Sarges, Colin Self and Evelyn Saylor. It’s ironic that despite the machined and futuristic edge of Herndon’s music, it is the flawless vocal performances from four humans that wins the hearts of fans assembled here tonight. 

Herndon’s background singing in church choir is obvious and when coupled with her fascination for Bulgarian folk singing and the discordant harmonies it deploys, among other techniques, it achieves a fascinating sound. At times it feels like Miranda Sex Garden, experimenting with electronic music, are beaming their madrigals to us from the distant future. In showcasing Proto, Herndon quite masterfully stitches the past, present and the future into a seamless, wondrous whole. It is joyously life-affirming verging on euphoric. 

The futurism of Herndon's music isn’t a completely bleak dystopia, rather she centres her focus on humans augmenting reality with technology and it is this approach that gives Herndon’s music plenty of soul. While the group’s voices are processed through a myriad of effects to achieve strange, otherworldly sounds, there are many times tonight where they are required to get by on the simple, unadorned beauty of their voices alone.

Despite the hi-tech whirr of Herndon’s synthesised arrangements, they tend to come across as somewhat pastoral in tone and designed to support her chorus of singers. While Herndon strikes somewhat self-conscious diva-esque poses, it’s the chorus of singers that surround her, effortlessly producing beautiful sounds and having a lot of fun in the process, that has fans cheering. Self leads the call and response of Evening Shades (Live Training), which is recorded for Spawn’s benefit, ultimately representing another data set to further its musical education. Tonight’s encore of Fade, upon Herndon’s insistence, brings the crowd to its feet to rave it up, almost proving that Herndon is a Berlin club kid at heart.