It was about 10pm for William Doyle when he picked up the phone from England.
“It’s weird doing interviews this time at night. I’ve never done it before,” he expresses, before adding, “I’m in the zone” with just a hint of sarcasm.
The 23-year-old behind the experimental electronic musings of East India Youth had best get used to the worldwide attention. His debut solo record, Total Strife Forever, which was released earlier this year, has seemingly propelled him from obscurity to the forefront of the British indie electronic scene.
“It’s been kind of a whirlwind, (a) bit crazy really,” says Doyle of the critical acclaim he has garnered thus far.
“I thought that it would be more of a niche release. It’s an odd album; there are only four vocal tracks on it and the rest of it is all made up of instrumentals. So I just didn’t really expect people to take to it as they have done.”
However, Doyle has had the album “shoved in my back pocket for quite a long time”. He finished the first mix of his debut a year and a half ago and started working on it long before that.
Therefore, it’s only natural that East India Youth’s spike in attention has come as a surprise.
“Gearing up for the release of it, I’ve already come to terms with it,” says the solo artist, “the record is quite old for me”.
Factor in the musician’s three-year run with his former indie band Doyle And The Fourfathers and you start to paint a picture of just how he must really feel about the album’s success so far.
The former three-piece, which disbanded in 2012, barely made a dent in their home country with an album and two EP releases.
Total Strife Forever, however, has surpassed what that band achieved in its entire run in just a few short months.
“It’s an odd album; there are only four vocal tracks on it and the rest of it is all made up of instrumentals”Doyle describes the transition from indie band to a solo project as a “gradual process” and insists that he’ll never go back.
“It was kind of an experiment to see if that world was really right for me,” says the musician on his time in Doyle And The Fourfathers, “and I don’t really think it is. I much prefer doing this.”
While Doyle enjoyed the camaraderie of touring with his former band, East India Youth allowed the musician to increase the speed in which he worked on music.
Being solo grants Doyle the freedom to take his “ideas from point ‘A’ to their logical conclusion” without the elongated process of having two other band members to go through first.
At the time of Doyle And The Fourfathers disbandment, the band stated that part of their demise was due to “deeply personal” matters.
How much that affected Total Strife Forever remains to be seen, but given the album’s imbued sense of heartache, it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to associate the two.
Putting that sorrow out on display for what is a growing audience would be a tough adjustment for the strongest of characters and Doyle admits that it “feels a bit weird”. But he remains somewhat coy when it comes to opening up on the events that inspired his debut release.
“(It details) things like heartbreak and stuff like that, but there are other things that I don’t really want to go into,” begins Doyle.
“Which is hard because you make a good point about how much anguish had to go into the record, but then I’m not willing to speak about it. Which is a bit difficult. I don’t know why I feel the need to put that point across, but to me it’s such an intensely personal album that I want to account for it in some ways.”
Given the anguish that the record does convey, it seems more than fair that Doyle would want to keep his personal life a mystery when he already allows listeners so much access.
But it’s not the same emotional access that we normally equate to grief stricken albums. Rather than provide us with stories that portray Doyle’s experiences, his debut album’s most striking moments come via its instrumentals instead of the few vocal tracks included.
“I’ve always thought of that whole rock and roll guitar music as more of a like a British obsession”“I felt like that there were certain things going on in my life that I couldn’t really trivialise in the lyrics and singing about them. It’s more about trying to convey those feelings and those emotions just through music rather than my voice or my words.”
The solo artist explained his theory behind electronic music’s human connection.
“I was having a conversation with a friend about it and he plays synthesisers as well and he put forward the idea that there is more of a chance with electronic music to tap into – it sounds really wanky and pretentious – the human condition.
“What I think he meant by that is that you’ve got the whole spectrum of frequency – you can create any sound,” continues Doyle.
“That whole palette of frequency you’ve got there means that you can more finely tune into a certain sound that represents a certain emotion, and I think if you were in tune with what you’re feeling enough, then you can definitely translate that with synthesis. So I think it’s about the spirit in which you make the music, really.”
Rock n’ roll tragics might disagree with that sentiment, and with Alex Turner’s recent Brit Award speech, Doyle offered up his thoughts on the guitar music ideology.
“I don’t really get the revolving question about guitar music (being) dead, or even using the phrase ‘guitar music’ seems reductive and silly to me. It doesn’t work like that. I think people hold onto the idea of rock and roll as being sort of like a juvenile but liberated sport.
“I just think that’s an old fashioned idea,” says Doyle, “we’re dealing with more intricate things as music itself than just this whole one idea as what is in music.”
“It’s really weird; I’ve always thought of that whole rock and roll guitar music as more of a like a British obsession that we have with it than. I don’t know what people around the rest of the world think, but I bet they just laugh at us trying to revive it.”
Yet with electronic music as expressive as East India Youth’s debut album, perhaps Britain should turn their obsession towards broader music genres.
Australia should be able see Doyle himself prove why, with the musician likely to be here sometime in 2014.
“I’ll be really really surprised if I don’t make it over before the end of the year,” says Doyle.
East India Youth provides the perfect opportunity to experience the human side of electronica, so if he does end up touring here, local audiences will be very lucky.
Total Strife Forever is out now via iTunes
Listen to ‘Heaven, How Long’ from Total Strife Forever here:
