Reviews
November: 18 albums you need to hear this month
Month's listening sorted
James Holden & The Animal Spirits 'The Animal Spirits' (Border Community)
By describing it as “synth-led folk-trance standards”, could James Holden’s new album be a mea culpa for his past – specifically the early 00s, when his ornate, prog-trance epics such as ‘One For You’ polarised dance music fans? Yet no amends are necessary: those cuts are intriguing documents of their time, and the music Holden has released since then has been consistently enthralling. With a new band alongside him, he fills ‘The Animal Spirits’ with haunting brain-melters that fuse modular synths, jazzy musicianship and trance-like rhythms. As the sax and cornet-embellished frenzy of ‘Pass Through The Fire’ shows, he can still get you twisted. S Worthy
7/10
