Holy Other – XOYO, London 22/06/2011

It’s a shame when the initial buzz around a venue dwindles out and leaves that space to become just a regular sized dot on a landscape of live music such as London’s. For all the furore around XOYO’s openings, it could so easily have been so different. Unfortunately, a slew of troubled performances (including one quite spectacular breakdown of all equipment that left nothing but a blaring fire alarm to fill the sonic vacancy) have left it to hide more in the shadows of this vibrant East london humdrum as opposed to stand like the proud obelisk of glee that it could have been.

Walking into its basement surroundings could make you so easily think that a night is here to be had. That the PA is there to obliterate your eardrums into a thousand, smoking shards and you’d still leave with a gleaming, deaf smile. If that was the case for an artist like Manchester’s Holy Other (here tonight in support of How To Dress Well) then maybe an epiphany would have occurred. But as the young producer walks on, bathed in the light of his ghostly projections, it swiftly becomes clear that not even an artist like he can bleed the senses of all their worth.

His recent With U EP is, undoubtedly, one of the musical highlights of the year so far – an amazingly powerful piece of electronic mastery that manages to hide beneath a shroud of complex melodic subtlety. Less than a week ago, said subtlety may well have been blown out of the water when put through Sonar Festival’s ear-bleeding reverie, and would have been all the better for having that. But tonight’s slow build leaves more to the imagination than it really should.

The struggle to beat the concrete shell of the venue of all of its acoustic power is a struggle from the off, only come the midway point of the set does payoff really come with a very welcome introduction to his remix abilities that emerges from the unfortunate din of the watered down EP material. His rework of Magic Mountain manages to move people for the first time, but still more in the emotional stakes than in physical ones, leaving its downtempo heaviness to swoop in unexpectedly as his movements become ever more frantic. It’s an implication that manages to cool and quicken simultaneuosly as a double-headed closer of ‘Feel Something’ and ‘We Over’ bring things to an understated if somewhat satisfactory climax.

The sense of losing out remains though. His swift walk offstage doesn’t necessarily need to be read into. But, if you were too, you feel a disheartening. There will be times when there will be no question about Holy Other’s ability to whip those in attendance into unquestionable frenzy – once this cavern is escaped, it will be sooner rather than later.