Slowdive
Holding Our Breath

Released in June 1991, "Holding Our Breath" is the third EP by Slowdive, released just three months before the masterpiece "Just For A Day". Formed in 1989 in Reading, the band found in Rachel Goswell and Neil Halstead the cornerstone of a formation destined to become one of the best expressions of that movement called shoegaze in the early nineties.

Inspired by the fathers of the genre, those My Bloody Valentine who in 1991 would deliver the cathartic masterpiece "Loveless", Slowdive quickly developed, from their first eponymous EP in '90, a very different approach from their Irish colleagues. The dissonant wall of sound guitars are present but not so imposing and omnipresent. The melodies are ethereal and dreamy, but also sad and melancholic. Moreover, the rhythmic flow that in MBV was almost always tense and impetuous here dilates and expands slowly, static, narcotized, an approach to shoegaze that focuses on rarefied, almost ambient atmospheres.

The EP consists of four tracks, which in terms of impact and imaginative strength could have easily been part of the intense debut album, and indeed "Catch the Breeze" was also included in "Just For A Day", but it's the only track from this EP that would be reprised in a full-length. Slowdive were now ready for the big leap of the true debut, compared to the two previous EPs, the sound is pushed even more with force and conviction towards the ethereal and evocative sounds that would come in the following months. The opening is entrusted to "Catch The Breeze", perhaps the band's most well-known track (although here it is played in an even slower and more atmospheric version of the song) with a beginning dominated by stunning slow-motion melodies and the voices of Goswell and Halstead intertwining in floating mantras of pure wonder, sinking their song into celestial melodies and sweet dissonant waves of feedback. "Golden Hair", a cover of Syd Barrett, rendered completely unrecognizable and altered by the band to the point that the only thing seeming to share with the original written by the former Pink Floyd mind is the lyrics (a Joyce poem), the enchanting voice echoes in the void, almost trembling it rests on waves of noise until it crashes against a melancholic and resigned lullaby created by the guitars, destined also to fade into the wonderful chaos.

"Shine" opens with noisy glimpses where an intense melody gradually makes its way, a continuous embrace between Goswell's beautiful voice and the ethereal, melancholic, and illuminating embroidery of the rest of the band, among moments of pure sonic hypnosis and steep celestial chasms. "Albatross" closes the circle: an increasingly atmospheric and mystical sound, voices between ethereal and afflicted, melodies this time just hinted at slipping away, once again accompanied by hypnotic noise and rhythmic awakenings that until now remained in the shadow. Everything was ready, just a few months and one of the best albums ever would see the light.