Holy Other has been more or less in constant rotation for me since 2010's perfect We Over single, which makes it kind of surprising that the mysterious Manchester producer is just now getting around to releasing an actual full-length album.  I was a little worried that his very narrow aesthetic (drugged, deteriorated, slow-motion sex music?) would make a longer release drag a bit, but my fears were mostly unfounded. While I do not think the comparatively dark and minimal Held quite hits the heights of some of Holy Other's categorically stellar earlier work, it is still pretty damn good and likely to play an indirect role in many pregnancies.
Holy Other, along with Balam Acab, has always been one of the most compelling and representative examples of the "Tri-Angle Records aesthetic" (despite their best attempts to diversify): melancholy downtempo electronica with a healthy predilection towards both innovation and hookiness.  Holy Other stands a bit apart though, finding a sexy and sensuous niche a bit more abstract than intermittently excellent label mate How to Dress Well, who veers much closer to "song" territory and actually has lyrics and choruses.  Despite eschewing all such "pop" trappings, Holy Other's vision has always been a surprisingly catchy one: achingly slow, minimal beats beneath thickly throbbing synths and cut-up R&B vocal snatches.  While that is admittedly a fairly trendy thing to be doing right now, Holy Other is large part of the reason that the trend exists in the first place and he executes it much, much better than most (or perhaps he is simply one of the most vicious self-editors around, which would explain his trickling output).
Held does not take many liberties with Holy Other's very successful formula, but it still take more than I would have expected.  In general, it is a bit more restrained and meditative than its predecessor, the With U EP (which was a "break-up album" of sorts).  Part of that may be due to his recent fascination with Gregorian chants (there is a curiously somber, sacred feel to some passages), but I suspect it is more attributable to both an evolution towards subtlety and the demands of sustaining a mood for 35 minutes rather than just writing a killer single or two.  There are some killer singles to be found, of course, as the languorously swelling "W(here)" and the ghostly coda of "U Now" are appropriately infectious, but the emphasis seems to have been much more on creating a brooding and sensuous whole rather than a collection of "hits."
Uncharacteristically, this is one of the rare times where I actually prefer catchy singles to depth and maturity, but only a little–I would unhesitatingly steer anybody unfamiliar Holy Other towards With U over this (unless they are resourceful enough to track down the out-of-print We Over 7").  That is not to say that Held is a disappointment–it is not.  Far from it.  It admittedly lacks some of the immediacy of its predecessors, but there is not weak song in the bunch and Holy Other is at the top of his game with his vocal sample manipulations ("Nothing Here" being pretty much a clinic on how to use cut-up and pitch-shifted vocals movingly).  Of course, addressing the details and subtle changes in style misses the elephant in the room here: Held contains nine solid new songs by a consistently excellent and distinctive artist that had previously only formally released six songs to date.  For me, that constitutes a legitimate event and it was worth the wait.
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