Platform is the second studio album by American electronic producer Holly Herndon, released on May 19, 2015, via 4AD. The album received wide critical acclaim upon its release.[1] It is the first commercially released album to include a track intended to trigger autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), "Lonely at the Top".[2][3][4][5][6]
Winston Cook-Wilson of Pitchfork wrote that "Platform may turn out to be the most thought-provoking experimental electronic music release of the year."[12] Laurie Tuffrey of The Quietus wrote that "in so solidly refuting musical clichés, it can genuinely lay claim to the oft-used description forward-facing."[18]The Guardian's Tshepo Mokoena wrote that "[Herndon] turns cold, lifeless synthetic beats into disconcerting, disjointed rhythms that glitch and collapse on each other", describing the album as "gloriously avant garde and fiercely inventive."[9]Drowned in Sound wrote that "at once Herndon’s most accessible and most adventurous record, this is digital age avant-garde sound art put through a pop prism, and it’s all the more exciting as a result."[19] Heather Phares of AllMusic described the album as "nuanced in how it combines political, technological and structural and ideological concepts."[8] In naming Platform among 2015's best experimental albums, PopMatters wrote: "It’s fair to say if you're unfamiliar with [Herndon's] work, you've never heard anything like it: EDM-streaked sound collage, at once robotic and deeply personal."[20]
