It’s not really doing down other computer-based musicians to suggest that Berlin-based, Tennessee-born Holly Herndon is a computer musician par excellence. With a CV to make you weep, this respected Stanford academic of all things musical probably didn’t need to bother topping it off by making one of the most critically lauded, technically complex - and somehow deeply human - albums of the past few years. But she went ahead and did it anyway.
Herndon is quick to point out that her most recent album, Proto, is actually the work of a ragtag cast of characters akin to something out of a sci-finovel: chiefly herself, collaborators Mat Dryhurst, AI expert Jules LaPlace… and a personified AI programme named Spawn, aka a DIY, neural network-based piece of software housed in a “souped-up gaming PC”.