Tears, literally. That's what happened when I heard Waking for the first time. It's that smile, you know? That smile that breaks out whether you want it to or not and you want to laugh, but instead you hold it in and your stomach tightens, letting the tears into your eyes. And none of the tracks were disappointing. They showed the cohesive variation within a framework that any artist would be proud of in a release. Im not gonna bother talking about the individual songs, they were astounding.

His music is smooth. It's smooth and fluid in a way that few things will ever be. It's ethereal. It's beepy, glitchy, it's beat driven. It's the result of a beautiful soul making beautiful music and you can't help but think, if there is an afterlife filled with everything you wanted to see, hear and touch this is what it sounds like. It's machinery with heart and it's grinding away at whatever's left of my skepticism. I'm a believer and E-sin is my savior.

To put it simply, hes damn good. To put it cryptically, his music is what I wish I had the guts to be.

josh will never be famous. his music is too advanced for the masses, and for this he will always be my hero.

if you think you can handle it then you should not pass up the chance to experience this. it is, in it's own right, another world. though, be warned, the sound that will come may change you in ways that you now would not desire.

and to this i say, "feel free to join us."

the man speaks the truth when he says "it's all about contrast" - to summarize the e-sin sound in a sentence is to do it an injustice, but for the most part, the name of the game is cold, crisp, clinical beats juxtaposed with gorgeously textured ambient swells. the result is an immaculately rendered piece of work with not a seam showing throughout.

holding on to drowning is a subdued affair with a distinctive minimalistic feel, but its hushed tones serve well to pique the listener's attention, slowly but surely rewarding them with reminders of how engaging subtlety can be. the material here doesn't present a particularly innovative sound -- it still fits comfortably within the compass of clicks-and-cuts style IDM, skillfully adorned with post-industrial flourishes -- but it's a masterful interpretation that breathes new life into the form. the rhythms within refuse to stagnate, discreetly slipping past the listener's ears only to transform into a new pattern, dotted with flecks of sound still lucid in short term memory. a thick thatch of ominous cello and moaning pads serve to paint a disquieting backdrop of decidedly unsettling atmospherics.

it minimizes the power of a release as uniformly strong as this to pick it apart and analyse the high and low points. however, the climaxes of 'evasion' and 'quiet all night', when the tension building throughout the EP releases briefly for a few chaotic spurts of junglesque beat destruction, are a welcome contrast (there's that word again) to the languidity that permeates the bulk of the eight tracks here and are certainly deserving of a mention. and as the album softly drifts to a close with a reference to the threatening thumps of 'evasion', the most critical listener would agree there's very little left to be desired of the 37 minutes that seem to elapse so quickly despite the album's pacing.

deeply evocative, flawlessly executed, endlessly fascinating and immediately embraceable, holding on to drowning is a landmark release among the netlabel community that should raise the bar for quality and consistency one can expect from bedroom artists.