Thom Yorke's voice is a beautiful instrument that UK electronic expat Mark Pritchard, now based in Australia, seems to enjoy mangling. Pritchard is a luminary of the '90s British ambient-house scene as one half of production duo Global Communication. In 2011, he released two remixes of Radiohead's busily reflective The King of Limbs opener "Bloom" under his own name and an alias (Harmonic 313). Both muddied up Yorke's airy vocals—a robotic, vocoder-like effect here, an underwater wobble there. On "Beautiful People," from Pritchard's upcoming Under the Sun LP, Yorke almost sounds like someone else entirely.

It's a shrewd way to accept a famous rock singer's rare guest appearance (has it been since Flying Lotus's Until the Quiet Comes, in 2012?) without fully ceding the spotlight. Yorke's digitally tweaked murmur, something like a robot under a blanket, is yearning and typically laconic, hinting at what Pritchard has described as "loss, hopelessness, and chaos" but also "love and hope." Radiohead fans are understandably greeting "Beautiful People" as Yorke's first new recording since the promisingly narrative-bound "Spectre" last December, amid anticipation for a world tour and prospective album. But the looping woodwind, muted synth chords, and shuffling percusion present a smaller-scale triumph: a subtly dazzling soundscape that gazes on adversity and, unlike Yorke's voice, refuses to be bent out of shape.