WILLIAM DOYLE + EVA LUNNY – ALPHABET, BRIGHTON 19.3.24
William Doyle is not just the name of one of Arnold Rimmer’s alter egos in ‘Red Dwarf’; it is also the birth name of East India Youth, a Bournemouth-born project that moulded shapes of electronic music, IDM and ambient music. After four years of a substantial profile of two full length albums under this name, plus support slots with British Sea Power, William retired the East India Youth moniker in favour of exploring work under his own name with his recent output such as 2019’s ‘Your Wilderness Revisited’, 2021’s ‘Great Spans Of Muddy Time’ and his freshly-released ‘Springs Eternal’ gathering a more distinctive singer-songwriter voice that stretches across genres of art pop, neo-psychedelia and electronic music. Tuesday night at Brighton’s fresh Alphabet venue was a last-minute addition to William’s ten-date tour of the album across the UK which ends at London’s Lafayette on April 3rd.
Opening for William is the talented Eva Lunny, a composer, producer and harpist whose album ‘Sonics & Meditations’ saw steady acclaim in June of last year (fun fact, Eva is the sister of Lambrini Girls vocalist Phoebe!). She comes onto the purple Alphabet stage and opens the set with a track called ‘Improvised Lullaby’, with reverb-blanketing harp arrangements and some very sombre patterns. The harp sounds electronically treated, with some vibrato echoing through the room as the piece’s main chord pattern remains a constant throughout, creating the feeling like I’m standing alone on a dark, barren hill. The next track is an unnamed piece, with Eva using a sustain pedal to create long decaying reverb in a cavernous soundscape. There’s a wider harp range interpolated here with beautiful ascending string patterns that sound like falling droplets of water. ‘What You Needed’ features some gorgeous waltzing scales with matching delays that add extra layers of notes. There’s even an inclusion of some deep sub bass tones put into play from Eva’s MIDI keyboard which add great depth to the piece’s arrangement. The second unnamed piece of the set contains some muffling reverberations in the background within some oceanic textures and shuffling harp arpeggios. More improvisational in atmosphere, Eva makes use of some gorgeous glissandos on the harp that completely transcends the attentive crowd. The closing track of the set, ‘Finally Home’ is more sparse than the rest of the set, but makes up for it with very loose chord changes and beautiful note swells that create a feeling of weightlessness!
Eva Lunny:
Eva Lunny – harp
Eva Lunny setlist:
‘Improvised Lullaby’
‘(untitled piece)’
‘What You Needed’
‘(untitled piece)’
‘Finally Home’
As Eva thanks the crowd for our time and packs down her harp and laptop, I’m left relaxed at the amazing display of sound I had just witnessed, now patiently awaiting William Doyle. I’ll admit, going into this show, I went in blind, not knowing the sounds of what was to come for me, but genre tags of art pop and electronic are often too good to miss when they’re executed by the right person. William, joined by cellist and saxophonist Alex Painter, make their way up to the stage and integrate some birdsong clips in the background before William starts singing acapella. This opener, ‘Garden Of The Morning’, has some gorgeous delayed and reverbed vocal effects and some cinematic soundscapes when the cello comes into play. William’s voice here is tremendous: captivatingly boundless in performance and dynamics, serving a taste of what was to come for the next 45 minutes. The next track, ‘Eternal Spring’ opens with some muzak-esque drums in the background with some matching cello and guitar lines from the duo. There’s a fantastic moment in this track where William and Alex duel each other with dissonant and atonal passages, exciting me to no end before a cello drone closes out the track!
‘Nobody Else Will Tell You’, one of the only tracks in the set that isn’t from the new album, contains flickering rhythms in a very minimalism-tinged approach that reminds me of composers like Philip Glass, as well as some rock-oriented riffs on the cello and acoustic guitar. The slightly swung rhythm of ‘Cannot Unsee’, with its rickety galloping electronic drum beats makes for an exciting change of arrangement in the set, as well as some trembling cellos that gives a slight ‘Sgt. Pepper’ vibe to the proceedings. William takes a moment to switch guitar tunings stating “I was planning to power through these songs because I’ve got nothing interesting to say”... cue the broken string that enforces much dialogue from William. Following a re-string, we head into the track ‘Soft To The Touch’, one of my favourites of the set with its one-chord progression and waltzing cello and guitar passages creating the image of it being a drinking song from the bottom of the sea. Fittingly heading into the song ‘Castawayed’, with Alex now on a saxophone, there’s a lack of electronic instrumentation for the first time in the set, adorned instead with some romantic acoustic guitar passages that remind me a lot of alt-J. William even spends a portion of the song mimicking the sounds of the tide which I thought was a nice touch!
‘An Orchestral Depth’ creates the feeling of floating aimlessly in space with its shrilling reverberated textures and a sound that sounds like a hybrid of Tapir! and Radiohead, with William controlling sub-bass notes with the MIDI controller pedalboard at his feet. Despite the lack of synth keyboard he was hoping to implement on it, ‘And Everything Changed’ plays around with punchy electronic drums and a strong indietronica soundscape before looped vocal lines come through. William freewheels his way in the closing passage through a twisted guitar solo smothered in delay and distortion. Fortunately, the keyboard starts working again heading into ‘Theme From Muddy Time’, a song that William states to be one of his favourites to play – it’s certainly clear to see why! The track’s minimal instrumentation of kick drum and fuzzy synth strings that make sweetly elaborate chord changes under William’s impressive vocal range remind me of Peter Gabriel’s ‘Biko’... in space! Even with this comparison, there’s still an incredibly unique voice from William that has shined through the entire night. Following the odd synthpop flair and disjointed guitar chords of the track ‘Now In Motion’, William proclaims how he feels sweaty, chaotic and “hasn’t felt alive until today”!
The first of the one-two punch of the tracks ‘A Short Illness’ and ‘A Long Life’ feels like a classical piece taken out of its time with faint oceanic cello bowing and soft acoustic guitar passages inside the track’s 5/8 time signature chorus. William and Alex transition the track into ‘A Long Life’s glistening drones and textures that envelope the crowd in an atmospheric haze that acts as one of the biggest and transcendental highs of the whole show. At last, we come to the closing track, the flamenco-tinged ‘Surrender Yourself’, packed with amazingly detailed rhythms and warbling synth bass in quintuple time. There’s a moment where William’s in-ear headphones, which help guide him in whereabouts in the song they are, fall out of his ears at a point where he needs them most… the section where there’s no drums! The sheer panic between William and Alex as he fails to put them back in, hoping for the best that they fall back into rhythmic focus is a tense moment to witness; fortunately they pull it off, but not for long as William stops the track and starts again from the second chorus! Despite a handful of technical faults that could not be helped, William Doyle had successfully converted me from a bystanding gig reviewer to a newfound fan, leading to a purchase of the new album and an exchange of compliments and appreciation! Now, if you’ll need me, I’ll be listening to ‘Soft To The Touch’ at full, blissful volume…!
William Doyle:
William Doyle – guitar, vocals, electronics, synthesiser
Alex Painter – cello, saxophone
William Doyle setlist:
‘Garden Of The Morning’ (from 2024 ‘Springs Eternal’ album)
‘Eternal Spring’ (from 2024 ‘Springs Eternal’ album)
‘Nobody Else Will Tell You’ (from 2019 ‘Your Wilderness Revisited’ album)
‘Cannot Unsee’ (from 2024 ‘Springs Eternal’ album)
‘Soft To The Touch’ (from 2024 ‘Springs Eternal’ album)
‘Castawayed’ (from 2024 ‘Springs Eternal’ album)
‘An Orchestral Depth’ (from 2019 ‘Your Wilderness Revisited’ album)
‘And Everything Changed (But I Feel Alright)’ (from 2021 ‘Great Spans Of Muddy Time’ album)
‘Theme From Muddy Time’ (from 2021 ‘Great Spans Of Muddy Time’ album)
‘Now In Motion’ (from 2024 ‘Springs Eternal’ album)
‘A Short Illness’ (from 2024 ‘Springs Eternal’ album)
‘A Long Life’ (from 2024 ‘Springs Eternal’ album)
‘Surrender Yourself’ (from 2024 ‘Springs Eternal’ album)
