Electronic Sound May 2015 (Regular Edition) | Page 20

ALBUM REVIEWS

While the first East India Youth album
was an assured unfurling of Doyle’s
electronic canvas, ‘Culture Of Volume’
finds said canvas covered with a thrilling
sonic assault. Chaotic in places and
often nudging on the brink of overload
in others, underpinning it all is a deft
melodic pop sensibility. It’s quite a ride.

EAST INDIA
YOUTH
Culture Of Volume
XL RECORDINGS
South coast indie kid turned electronic
champion returns with a stunner
of a second album
If, as our guitar toting friends would have
it, the end of the world as we know it
starts with an earthquake, you’d better
brace yourself.
The speakers crackle. A helicopter thudthud-thud kicks in from somewhere over
there and swirls around you. Then the
noise starts, an insistent, white, bright
fuzz. You’re under attack. A siren wails.
And then from nowhere, rich, soothing
chords slowly begin to rise and fall, as if
sounding the all-clear.
This is ‘The Juddering’, the opening
track on William Doyle’s sophomore
offering as East India Youth, a record that
laughs in the face of the difficult second
album adage. Yet it should have been
difficult. How do you follow a debut like
last year’s highly acclaimed, Mercurynominated ‘Total Strife Forever’? Who
even knew the former frontman of indie
almost-rans Doyle & The Fourfathers had
this in him in? You almost fear for him.

There are some unusual influences at
work too. ‘End Result’, ‘Turn Away’ and
the epic 10-minuter ‘Manner Of Words’
all have distinctly folky vibes, or perhaps
it’s flecks of prog. There’s some early
Genesis in Mr Doyle’s collection, we’ll
wager. And if that sounds odd, you’d
be right, because this is an odd record.
Gloriously so.
Sat alongside the onslaught of the
opener and the folk/prog leanings, there
are tracks such as ‘Beaming White’,
which arches its back in an uplifting

Pet Shop Boys kind of way, the happy
champagne tinkles of ‘Heart That Never’,
and the insistent four-to-the-four banger
‘Entirety’. The big difference between
this album and East India Youth’s debut
is that where vocals were lacking
on the latter, ‘Culture Of Volume’ is
predominantly vocal-led, with pride
of place taken by ‘Carousel’. Blimey.
Quivering and churchy and haunting, like
tears rolling down soft cheeks, it slowly
builds to a huge, satisfying wall of sound.
It is the most affecting six minutes and
24 seconds you’ll hear for some time.
There was always a danger that ‘Total
Strife Forever’ was a one-off, that
William Doyle got lucky. ‘Culture Of
Volume’ very much says otherwise.
NEIL MASON