HOLY OTHER - TOUCH EP
“Touch”, the centerpiece of Manchester-based producer Holy Other’s debut EP, is a spectral four minutes of twinkling keys, droning bass, and haunted gasps of human sound. After Burial, HO is not alone in using cut-up vocal samples to imbue his songs with structure and emotion, but the way he builds these pitch-shifted fragments into weaving symphonies of angst is incredibly affecting; the songs on his With U EP from which “Touch” is culled sound at once densely populated and unbearably alienating. The Touch EP collects a handful of remixes of the titular track and while none of them measure up to the breathy, yearning sensuality and dark catharsis of the original, some of these producers manage to rework the material into skewed and intermittently interesting shapes.
Matthewdavid’s remix, the weakest of the four, obscures the titular vocal sample in favor of a warped and hyperactive blanket of chillwave glut. Like the worst of that genre, it blends potentially engaging sounds and ideas into a gray and amorphous jumble that accomplishes nothing. Cupp Cave’s take is a more minimal and patient approach that takes the original framework and pares it down to a track of looped, woozy synths and golf game handclaps. It’s a fine remix, but, like Matthewdavid’s, a bit half-baked and pointless. The EP opens with Supreme Cuts’ take which seems to most fully explore the club potential so latent in HO’s music. They speed up the tempo and add a number of skittering rave drum breaks, creating a remix that, in its best moments, recalls the early-aughts tension of “Idioteque” and the globalized mixes of LA’s Nguzunguzu.The best remix, however, is by Vancouver’s Blood Diamonds who infuses HO’s track with a bright and steel-drummed tropical sheen. Holy Other’s songs are too off-kilter and lonely for dancing, but Blood Diamonds succeeds in appropriating that dancefloor potential to his more upbeat and technicolor production aesthetic. Instead of the dark anxiety of the original, BD gives us a more measured and propulsive melancholy. So, ultimately, we’re left with two pretty good remixes and a couple fairly bland ones. Kind of worth a listen if you love all things Holy Other. Truthfully, one would be better served by Holy Other’s own mixes which are considerably more involved and compelling than much of the material here. See: his remix of How To Dress Well’s “Suicide Dream 2” or Walls’ “Sunporch”.
