New UK group The xx are remarkable for what they don't do. They play the spaces (and the shadows) lazily building a sense of tension and (some) release. The result is one of the most beautifully refreshing - and best - records of the year.

xx is remarkable too when you contemplate the UK hype fizzing about the band; given that the group play a skittering, downbeat, halflight pop. Consisting of four students in their early 20s - Romy Madley Croft, Baria Qureshi, Oliver Sim and Jamie Smith - the story goes that the band met at south-west London's Elliott School (previously renown for producing Four Tet, Burial and Hot Chip) where they honed their recordings by essentially stripping them back to base elements.

The result is a shy, sexy somnambulist debut, one blanketed with a hazy, electronically speckled heartbreak. On 'VCR' the sleepy vocals of Madley and Sim intertwine, talking to and about each other simultaneously, the way the best duets should. 'Islands' has almost a bare, 'Fools Gold' style strut to it, the rubbery bass disappearing every now and then to be chewed up electronically, an organ drone drifting off into the reverbed ether...somewhere. You imagine this is what latter-day Radiohead demos would sound like, but if Thom was singing with (and to) his girlfriend, rather than about say, the perils of mankind. If it can be surmised into name calling; think slowed down Interpol guitar lines over a deconstructed 'Young Folks' with Everything But The Girl and Burial at the mixing desk, copies of In Rainbows and Disintegration never far away.

The xx could reasonably described as precocious (if such a term hadn't been hi-jacked by the flamboyant nonces/Patrick Wolf's of the world) such is their dedication to laying the band nude. 'Heart Skipped A Beat' is stripped back so that there's never more than four bare instruments caressing each other, yet, the result is dance music. Albeit of the comedown variety. Elsewhere there's still room for surprises. The subby throb under a mournful guitar line at the end of 'Fantasy' belies the mixing desk's more experimental tendencies; 'Infinity' somehow apes Chris Isaak's 'Wicked Game' with excellently laconic, moody results.

Swimming in reverb, 'XX' may well be the perfect confessional comedown record. But like with any such employment of music, the protagonist need to be steady of mind or the thing could very well send the listener sinking into the darkness. An amazing record and a low-key contender for year end lists.

www.myspace.com/thexx



The xx - 'Crystalised'