Not all music is good “car” music. I don’t listen to Lustmord in the car, for example. Put on “The Place Where The Black Stars Hang” and go tooling around town or on a road trip, and you’re going to miss most of what he’s doing. I also don’t listen to Masonna in the car, either. I like Masonna just fine (though, to be fair, Masonna doesn’t get heavy rotation in my day-to-day listening….I’ve got to be in the mood for it), but his noise is a little too demanding and distracting for me to listen while driving. Even out in the desert wastelands of west Texas, I’m still an attentive driver, so for car music, I don’t like anything that’s too terribly demanding, and I generally don’t listen to any brand new music in the car, either. For new music, I like to listen at home when I can devote enough attention to the music that I get a strong sense of it. So it was a new thing for me to have Holly Herndon make me promise to listen to her new release “Car” while driving.

As an aside, I’ll put in a plug for Twitter here. I’ve been leery of it, because of what I perceive to be a high “stupid bullshit to interesting stuff” ratio, but I discovered Holly on Twitter when she publicly mentioned liking Hafler Trio. And over the last couple of months, I’ve found new music and writers to connect with, and as a fan (and occasional noisemaker) and writer, they have found me. I’m just careful in who I choose to follow.

Let’s move along to the point of the post: Holly Herndon’s new release “Car”. She made it available on cassette, which seems appropriate. After all, in the days before portable music players and CD’s, cars came with cassette decks, and while I was a vinyl junkie, if I was buying something specifically because I wanted to listen to it in the car, I bought it on tape; recording from vinyl to tape was do-able, but a bit of a hassle, and always left blank bits of tape at the end on both sides. A cassette release seems very fitting for something made specifically for listening while driving. If you have the CD version, there are just two tracks, one for each side of the cassette. On the cover art, she’s also dressed to represent a car; I appreciate that kind of thematic consistency.

I set off on a drive from Monahans, TX to Odessa, and popped in “Car”. It took a minute to realize that the additional sound I was hearing was from the CD, starting with almost an electronic drone that complements the road noise of the car. This is very clever, and one of the things that makes “Car” work so well; the notes, pulses, clicks, and samples she chooses actually seem to enhance the natural sound that envelops you when you’re driving.

Throughout the CD, the music swells and ebbs, and the best way I can describe this is to say that she uses two sorts of silence. If you’re paying attention to where you’re driving (and I hope you are), in some places the music is obvious; you’re aware that you’re listening to electronic music. In some places, it fades away so that it’s not obvious that the music is still happening; it blends in with the road noise very well. This is the first type of silence. In other places the music completely fades away to actual silence, and when this happened, it was noticeable, in much the same way it’s you might not notice the cello in an orchestra piece until a rest, and the sound is conspicuous in its absence.

Throughout, some sound samples commonly heard by motorists are employed to interesting effect: sirens, scanning through radio stations, power windows, and a surprise bit that made me rewind and laugh out loud. As you naturally focus your attention on the road, the music allows you to just drive, but then reminds you now and again that it’s there, sonically augmenting your drive.

I won’t go into a whole lot of details on the music specifically, other than to say it’s well-constructed and provides plenty of variation within the parameters that she set (i.e. that it’s made for listening while in the car). I think how you experience this CD (or tape) would be different depending on where you’re driving, traffic conditions, and what else is happening on the road. The best way to experience it is to pop it in the car and go for a drive. Do it.

You can find Holly and more of her music at http://www.hollyherndon.com/ and follow her on Twitter: @hollyherndon