East India Youth
Culture Of Volume

And once again this year, I managed to find my summer album of 2015!

I never ask much from "summer albums": lots of lightness and carefreeness, a touch of pop just within the limits of radio airplay, a certain danceability (only for my brain because the rest of my body is more static than Pamela Anderson's chest), a sprinkle of '80s synthetic sounds and little else. I just ask to be able to go back in time, to those hot '80s summers, to that electro-synth-pop music that made millions of people shake their butts and that, in cyclical waves, is re-proposed renewed (or not) in today's musical landscape.

Behind this mysterious name "EAST INDIA YOUTH," hides the young English all-rounder (producer, writer, bassist, keyboardist) William Doyle on his second album after "Total Strife Forever" from 2014. "Culture Of Volume" is a great album, multifaceted and multicolored: the very simple and clean voice is supported by solemn and majestic synthetic walls in "Carousel," the references to Depeche Mode/Pet Shop Boys of the '80s are clear and evident in the wonderful high-ranking triptych "End Result" - "Beaming White" - "Turn Away," the three instrumental tracks are either layers upon layers of keyboards (the annoying and dirty "The Juddering") or electro-industrial blasts for baby-ravers ("Entirety") or movements with a '70s electronic flavor in an oriental sauce ("Montage Resolution"). There are also the sappy plastic tracks (the dispensable "Don't Look Backwards"), the dancefloor techno "Hearts That Never," and the blatant plagiarism of the Depeche in the epic "Manner Of Words" (only David "Dave" Gahan's voice is missing to fully enter the top ten best DM tracks from the eighties and beyond).

An aggravating album for all the synth-pop detractors, superbly arranged, symphonic and grandiose at times ("Carousel"), elegant and baffling, melodic and simple in the more overtly pop tracks. "Culture Of Volume" is the clear demonstration that all it takes are ideas and musical intelligence to revive or reassess sounds that are now old and outdated. Maybe being born in the '70s is enough to appreciate this dive into the ever-fresh waters of the past. All it takes is the love for a single guitar note to hate "Culture Of Volume".

An album to hate or to love but, at least, to listen to.