(Tri Angle Records)

www.tri-anglerecords.com 

In woozy synth swells and mangled vocal samples, Holy Other's With U EP plays like warped house vinyl, each somber moment unrolling at a snail's pace. The Manchester, UK-based producer's debut for NYC's hip Tri Angle Records is dense, uncomplicated beat music -- there aren't significant melodic shifts to speak of, nor are there grandiose, unexpected bridges. Instead, With U affects in its soft, dewy textures and creepy pitched-down voice bits.

Holy Other's With U is riddled with looped, elongated notes and pillowy rushes of chords on tracks like "Touch," where clinks and reverberating grooves help position all of this neatly alongside other Tri Angle releases such as Balam Acab's deep, forward-looking See Birds EP. These five tracks follow a handful of similarly atmospheric Holy Other pieces that have been widely circulated on the Web. Transparent issued a two-songer in late 2010, and B-side "Yr Love" also landed on With U.

Like most of the EP, "Yr Love" swings sluggishly. It's wordless save for tight-edited vocal samples that are barely given room to fully register, while airy synths cushion the gurgling line in the background, filling out the track as it evolves. The combinations are just as dark and beautiful with complete vocal lines, as a comely Asobi Seksu remix will demonstrate, but maybe this is what sets With U apart from the cast that writers have somehow worked into hype reports for Holy Other's tunes.

Asobi Seksu - Trails (Holy Other Remix) by HOLY OTHER

Connections to a more derivative brand of R&B admirers out there is baseless for more than one reason. Primarily, no one stands in front of a mic for With U. Instead of overtly sleazy lyrics and cheap 90s knockoffs, this intimate, muggy-evening sound is open for interpretation, as if we're to piece it together like code, finishing the sample-stiched sentences that aren't quite allowed to progress on the EP. In this age of over-simplification and the misguided tendency toward condensing and dumbing down every goddamned thing possible, With U feels fresh, new and mysterious.

DOWNLOAD: "Know Where", "Touch" DOMINIC UMILE