A lonely recording from the Arctic Circle spawns a long electronic winter
In Hear This, A.V. Club writers sing the praises of songs they know well—some inspired by a weekly theme and some not, but always songs worth hearing.
Even here in Chicago, it’s slowly edging its way toward spring. But inside my headphones, it’s remained the frozen, unforgiving winter of Eric Holm’s Andøya. Holm is an American electronic musician who resides in London, but that minor geographical disconnection has nothing on the methods undertaken for his debut. To make it, Holm traveled to one of the coldest, remotest places on Earth: the Norwegian archipelago Andøya, about 300 kilometers inside the Arctic Circle. There he placed a single contact mic on a large telegraph pole, through which he captured the vibrations of the island’s various military listening stations. Manipulating them into cavernous echoes and metallic grinds, Holm creates an aural picture of loneliness that’s both unsettling and starkly beautiful—and one of the most arresting electronic releases so far this year.
