HER SPACE HOLIDAY

It's been a rough year for Marc Bianchi. The 28 year-old musician behind Her Space Holiday broke up with longtime musical partner and girlfriend Keely this past March. Since then, he's been trying to get better, waiting to get through to the next thing and working on moving on. Keely has always been the focus, directly and indirectly, of Her Space Holiday. This new record, 'The Young Machines' is no exception.

The first seven tracks on 'The Young Machines', he says, were written before the pair ended their nine-year relationship. The last three, perhaps the most honest and raw on the record (track nine, "Girl Problems", ends with Bianchi hollowly mouthing 'I will always think of you as someone that I love'), were written in the aftermath.

Bianchi used HSH as a tool-almost a third party-in his relationship, writing songs to say to Keely what he couldn't say in conversation. That, he says, is what helped break them up, and break down, in the end. "It destroyed it. It destroyed it in the way that we weren't able to evaluate where we were as people. We were moving too fast and I got caught up in the myth. I feel that I'm closer to her now then I ever have been. I feel sad that we didn't get to know each other in a way that we could have," he says.

Making 'The Young Machines' was part release and part reflection. "It was a huge wake up call to me. This relationship was the biggest thing that happened to me in my life. I think that I created a reality and bought into it for so many years." Even worse, he says," I created my own world and made it public. That's what temporarily made the world more concrete. But it was a half-truth. With this record, it was like showing me my lowest point and ugliest and most truthful sides."

Bianchi named this new record 'The Young Machines' because, he says, "we're so filled with bugs and so beautiful at the same time. The faults are what make the whole aesthetic and beautifulnessÉI'm trying to rebuild. Making the upgrades and all that stuff." He trails off and then continues: "I don't know. Things are working out but even when things are good it's sad because it's unfamiliar."

Compounding that lack of the familiar will be all the touring Bianchi's got planned for the next year or so. It will hopefully give him some release and some space to get over his broken heart. "I hope people can see the ugliness in the record. All the songs on this record seem so different to me now. Hopefully people will be generous."

JULIE GERSTEIN

Mush Records