[Playhouse]

“Slightly/Gridlock” is the first of two new LoSoul singles released in anticipation of his third album for Playhouse. If this release is anything to go by, Care will have an enormous range. A-side “Slightly” is a swirl of fat, bright and wet minimal house elements anchored by idiosyncratic drum programming. Like most successful minimal house, “Slightly” combines melodic and rhythmic components seamlessly. A stuttering, filtered, and oddly unrecognizable noise that forays into the track’s third minute, playing with the central riff before switching its focus towards some lonely snares that enter the fray. It always seems to me this quality –- the slippery wrestle of movement and tone until they become indistinguishable — gives the most reduced music its unique charm. “Slightly” affords that sensation generously, and LoSoul seems to have gone one step further by imbuing into his sounds a gregariousness that gives each a little personality unto itself. Every merry and frenetic snippet of drum and synth, each fat squeak and juicy squelch, seem to disagree, if only slightly, in attitude from the next. By the time eight minutes have passed, the argument has come to a heat and leveled off again as LoSoul’s sonic friends are off to the next party.

“Gridlock,” the B-side, preserves little of that whimsy in a more run-of-the-mill setting with rhythms that are less off-kilter. Indeed, the automotive tone suggested by the title is only one of many subtle homages to the techno of a certain motor city (no, not Stuttgart). “Gridlock,” unfortunately, feels like “Slightly” after it has worked forty years on an assembly line. It’s very far from a bad track, but lacks some of the funk, eccentricity, and individuality of the flip.