- Record Label: Border Community
- Release Date: Nov 3, 2017
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Oct 30, 2017While it's a million miles from the techno of Holden’s earlier career, its rhythms and hooks are infectious. The Animal Spirits is, put frankly, one of the most complex, immersive and impressive albums of the year.
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Nov 7, 2017The record is a lot of things and also unquestionably not, for the most part embodying an impregnable and extraordinary soundscape that fortifies itself against deconstruction, but its one truly distinctive quality is that it’s the precise opposite of boring.
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Dec 11, 2017Overall, The Animal Spirits feels very organic, brought about by the spontaneity of the performances, the brief window of time in which it was recorded, and Holden's own evolutionary arc. It also offers a glimpse into the deeper corners of his psyche, peeling back another layer to reveal just how colorful his imagination can be.
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Nov 13, 2017It’s an ambitious collision of worlds that Holden and The Animal Spirits pull off with style.
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Nov 13, 2017Thanks to its polyrhythms and rich instrumental textures, The Animal Spirits is as likely to appeal to fans of experimental rock music (especially electro-tribal searchers like Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance, Fuck Buttons, or Dan Deacon) as it is to those who regularly spend evenings at the club.
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Nov 10, 2017If The Inheritors was the sound of the former trance artist undergoing a spiritual rebirth, The Animal Spirits is as close as he's come to transcendence.
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Nov 7, 2017On his third LP, James Holden establishes a sound wholly his own, allowing The Animal Spirits' gorgeous, absorbing and wonderfully unkempt mix of psych, jazz, folk and electronic to infiltrate the listener's psyche.
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Nov 6, 2017Simultaneously more overtly experimental yet more easily accessible - even the most cacophonous warble here is rooted in strong melodies--than Holden's past output, The Animal Spirits is a triumph that makes rigidly electronic textures seem so last year.
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MojoOct 30, 2017A bewitching brew of experimental jazz, droning electronics and raw, progressive rock. [Dec 2017, p.87]
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Q MagazineOct 30, 2017Fans of his early output will continue to wonder why he's forsaken immaculate prog house so completely: those up for the trip, conversely, will just be keen to know where he's headed next. [Dec 2017, p.108]
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UncutOct 30, 2017The Animal spirits is earthy and tactile. [Dec 2017, p.23]
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Nov 8, 2017Now a bandleader of a live ensemble rather than a solitary synth programmer, he has opened the door to an entirely different sort of career for himself, one where concerns for the dancefloor shrink away to nothing, and the possibilities of repetition are infinite.
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Nov 7, 2017With a new band alongside him, he fills The Animal Spirits with haunting brain-melters that fuse modular synths, jazzy musicianship and trance-like rhythms.
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Nov 6, 2017Occasionally, as on, er, Thunder Moon Gathering, things get a little pastichey, but it’s worth it for sublime moments like the title track, where lines between worlds and times blur.
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Nov 2, 2017These soundscapes require a Pharoah Sanders-style voyager who can fly us into stratospheric realms, but unfortunately, Etienne Jaumet’s solos just splutter along the runway without ever achieving lift-off.