Hannah Holland - Tectonic - PRAH Recordings

DJ, producer, label boss and soundtrack composer, Hannah Holland has never been one to tie herself to mediums. Now, on her debut studio album Tectonic, released on PRAH Recordings on September 17th, Holland pours her career to date into one outstanding and diverse body of work. Lead single Midnight Horizon, out now, lands somewhere between Ennio Morricone and Trentemøller, and as Holland says, “is a flight over the desert scenario, as horses gallop on a dusty night…with something brewing over the horizon.” A darkly energising prelude to her long player debut Tectonic, Midnight Horizon features the string arrangement of PRAH label mate Raven Bush, wound around guitars and beats that provide a modernist cinematic mystery. Hannah Holland has long been a mainstay of London’s queer and alternative club scene. Her eclectic DJ sets have taken her from Berlin’s infamous Berghain, NYC with friends The Carry Nation, Glastonbury’s NYC Downlow and legendary parties Adonis and Trailer Trash. She’s remixed the likes of Goldfrapp,The Knife and Metronomy and run her label Batty Bass for over ten years. More recently however Holland has been moving into soundtrack work with 2020’s critically acclaimed Channel 4 drama Adult Material, directed by Dawn Shadforth firmly putting her on the map as a composer and proving very much an influence on how she approached Tectonic. Her score for the Steve Conway directed film Electrician was named in the official selection of New York Cinematography’s Best Original Score in last year and winner of Best Music Top Indie Film Awards Tokyo. Tectonic straddles her love of the dancefloor with an increasingly cinematic expanse. Traces of Holland’s past emerge and dissolve – the post-punk Cure-esque basslines of opener Ode To Neneh and Midnight Horizon, the breaks that drive the otherwise dreamlike Atom Dancer – as the producer seeks to encapsulate where she’s been and where she’s going across twelve mesmerising tracks. Shutters, written when Holland had just moved to the British seaside, was "inspired by day time dancing and the deep summer sizzling heat. Straight up genre defying UK dance." “I wanted to experiment with depth and space in the record,” she says. “I was thinking of what I would like to listen to while I’m travelling, on my own in my headphones: an experience someone can get intimate with. It can at times translate to the dancefloor but it’s also a movie for the ears.” With DJing off the agenda for now, Holland has created something of a refuge in her hometown Margate by turning a shipping container into a recording studio. It’s here she recorded Tectonic, bringing in "incredibly creative and talented musicians, Francesca Ter-Berg on cello and Raven on violin, who added the element of depth and emotion I was after” Holland says. Whilst Tectonic is rich in a sense of adventure, the cultural melting pot of London, community and the transcendental potential of the dance floor has always been Holland’s biggest inspiration. Tectonic is, spiritually, her ode to club culture.