East India Youth’s second album, Culture of Volume, starts with one of the most incredible pieces of electronic music we’ve heard this year; The Juddering. It falls somewhere between the sound of a helicopter landing and a computerised version of the longest, most intense, orgasm you’ve ever had. Bursts of static whir around your ears as William Doyle piles on layers of skittering distorted sound and if you’re pummelling the track loudly enough through a set of headphones you’ll almost certainly shit yourself in a glorious ‘WTF’ moment. It sounds as if Doyle has come to destroy music forever. He hasn’t, far from it, but it’s a powerful opening that makes you wonder how intense this record is going to be.
The answer isn’t what you think. From that point Culture of Volume heads off into a world of giddying pop music, informed by the Pet Shop Boys, Vangelis, OMD, Pink Floyd and techno (the speed laden loops of Hearts That Never remind us a lot of Underworld as does the insanely full on aggression of Entirety). This is a record that seems weirdly out of place with pretty much everything around it right now; it’s probably all the better for it. Yet at its heart (after The Juddering, which is brilliantly misleading to a certain extent) once you’ve stripped away the savage electronic pulses, distorted beats, melancholy washes of synths and computerisations, what you’re left with is Doyle’s top-notch songwriting. It’s that that underpins everything. Another victory for leftfield pop music.
East India Youth - Beaming White
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