Now into her 40s and with a career spanning two decades, Los Angeles singer-songwriter Julia Holter remains an artist with a uniquely unconventional sonic presence. A classically trained composer, Holter’s music has some obvious touchpoints and influences (Cocteau Twins, Aerial-era Kate Bush) but still sounds resolutely individual.

After a six-year hiatus following 2018’s dense, ambitious Aviary, Holter re-emerged in 2024 with Something In The Room She Moves, a looser, more minimalist record that was composed during the isolation of the pandemic and while its creator was experiencing pregnancy and motherhood.

Holter always knew there were multiple forms her song Materia from Something In The Room She Moves could take. Originally included on this album as a simple, ghostly voice and electric piano melody, she wanted to experiment with building textures and stretching out the harmonies of the song through more complex, layered arrangements. 

On her new release Materia, which can be viewed as a companion or sequel to Something In The Room She Moves, Holter has realised not one but two distinct versions of the song. Materia 2 is subtly more propulsive, with a combination of drum machine, fretless bass and clarinet recalling the art rock atmospherics of Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom. The lyrics are reimagined too – fragments of surrealistic images reinforcing the original’s link between spirit and body. Materia 3 is less successful – here, Holter simply slows down the version from her 2024 album, making an already unhurried song feel soporific.

Materia is expanded into a seven-track album through the inclusion of some other tracks not included on Something In The Room She Moves but dating from a similar period. The Laugh Is in the Eyes, released as a single in 2024, is Holter at her most accessible, with a dream pop melody, swelling rhythms and meatier, less ethereal vocals. But we’re back in more experimental territory with the gorgeous, dreamy My Lost One, which marries a gently undulating acoustic bass with Holter’s spectral, Liz Fraser-like voice, leaping and echoing to match the tempo of the song.

Fantasy and Clepsydra both feel a little undercooked, sketchy and slight, but the 10-minute My Twin, improvised by Holter alone mostly in one take, is a captivating ambient kaleidoscope of shifting tempos, tones and rhythms, with Holter seemingly in dialogue with another version of herself as she softly chants “And my twin sings to share/ Joys she’s known each day”.

There has always been combination of fluidity and restlessness in Holter’s work, with sections of lush beauty suddenly veering off along unexpected paths. Materia epitomises this duality, and while as a short collection of reworked and exploratory compositions it understandably lacks the expansiveness and cohesion of her major albums, it’s nevertheless well worth exploring for those already familiar with her work.