Total Strife Forever

Based on its title and cover art alone, you’d be forgiven for expecting a bleak odyssey indeed when approaching William Doyle’s first full-length release under the East India Youth moniker. And yet, although it can’t be labelled as an exuberant basket of laughs, Total Strife Forever is a strikingly accessible achievement, with its more portentous sensibilities counterweighted by an insistent air of wide-eyed amazement. Across fifty minutes, Doyle strikes a canny balance between glacial electronica and warm doses of wonder, and the results are impressive to behold.

The sonic precursors of Total Strife Forever are generically varied, and the result is an ever-shifting mixture of sounds; a number of sub-genres synthesised into a whole which – if not entirely cohesive – is consistently magnetic. The first suite of the four-part title track bears resemblance to the output of These New Puritans, with that group’s brooding archaisms transposed to ice-blasted electronic wilderness. Elsewhere, the twinkling ‘Midnight Koto’ reflects the more pared-down outings of M83, while the pounding, militaristic acid-house of ‘Hinterland’ will be dug by fans of film composer Cliff Martinez. Grounded in the final segments of the title track, the album concludes by dialling down the vibrancy and becoming swathed in ambient sketches of sound.

Total Strife Forever is a debut which hints at a world of possibility.

All examples are engaging in their own right, but the most instantaneous offerings are – quite understandably – those in which Doyle lends his voice to the mix. In fact, had it been granted a wider marketing strategy, it’s feasible to imagine three of the four vocalised tracks as crossover hits. In particular, ‘Dripping Down’ is a blissful work of synth-pop, which crowns itself with a starburst of arpeggios and a hymnal coda. ‘Looking for Someone’ is more modest in scope but equally melodic, and ‘Heaven, How Long’ (reworked from a previous EP) is positively euphoric, verging on epic as it billows into a cosmic electro-pop gem. These earworms within the experimentation are key assets in a collection which has a strong pulse beneath its icy surface.

If there is a flaw in Total Strife Forever, it’s that its disparate tendencies don’t quite cohere when arranged as a singular entity. A message in its liner notes claims that the album was “recorded in bedrooms between November 2010 & July 2013”. It’s certainly commendable that Doyle stuck to his craft in finessing eleven tracks of such quality, but the lengthy gestation does underline the fact that many of these arrangements began as disparate ideas, drawn out over three years without fully gelling as a unit. Consequently, Total Strife Forever runs the risk of sounding vaguely directionless.

However, it would be unfair to deny praise to such an album simply because it doesn’t hang together perfectly, and on the basis of its cerebral clout and the vigour of its standout moments, the debut from East India Youth is more than worth your time. As a collection of sonic sojourns, Total Strife Forever is an intriguing listen, and a debut which – if not entirely self-realised – hints at a world of possibility for Doyle.

Similar To: Cliff Martinez, Teeth of the Sea

MP3: ‘Dripping Down’, ‘Hinterland’

Photo: flickr/smokeghost