STARTING with the epic electronic thing that is Glitter Recession, Total Strife Forever sets out its stall as a complex yet mainly accessible album.
East India Youth – AKA William Doyle – builds from a simple, single electronic piano riff to a multilayered and cinematic score. Think Blade Runner meets Phillip Glass’ Koyaanisquatsi soundtrack, and you get the idea. The album continues in almost seamless progression, with numerous instrumental variations on a theme and no fewer than four sections of a title track.
Once vocals appear on the excellent Dripping Down, the album gets a new lease of life, and sounds much in the style of the Postal Service, before returning to bleeps and beats again. The problem is not the quality of the tracks, which are very good on the whole and filled with energy Hollywood editors will no doubt pick up, but the exhaustion that can come from too much of a similar thing. You look forward to the tracks that stand out, at the expense of the album as a whole.
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