East India Youth: Total Strife Forever

By JUICE Malaysia • 11 Mar 2014 in Review

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Text Christopher Ujine Ong

OVERACHIEVING DEBUT
One hotshot band’s dissolution is another man’s reinvention. When his band, Doyle & The Fourfathers, went kaput and guitars weren’t doing it for him anymore, William Doyle did what every true rock‘n’roller did – he went to play on his laptop. Shutting himself away in a Docklands’ flat to tinker seriously on work that started some three years ago, he emerged last year with an acclaimed Hostel EP, and for this year, a debut album that bursts with beauty and boldness that will keep strife away forever.

Off of that EP, is ‘Heaven, How Long’, an ambient whorl that builds into an euphoric high, so uplifting that when Doyle implores, “Heaven, how long, how long?”, lacrimal ducts of listeners everywhere will burst involuntarily. But not everything is emotion cheaply bought via a crescendo. Doyle has depth and breadth, reaching towards Vangelis, Philip Glass, and Brian Eno in the four-piece suite that is the title track – a symphonic soundscape of ambient noise sequenced into separate segments. And as if to counter-balance such pomposity, he includes an Underworld-esque techno track, ‘Hinterland’. Trust some people to overachieve on a debut.

LISTEN TO: ‘Heaven, How Long’
IF YOU LIKE THIS YOU’LL DIG: Braids
RATING: 4