As a teenager, William Doyle was singing in a fledgling indie band while nurturing an electronic music side project. A few years later — and the group exists only as a dormant online presence, while Doyle is a solo artist with a Mercury Prize-nominated debut album as East India Youth (a moniker taken from his temporary Docklands residence).
Despite the record’s bedroom origins, Doyle remains a frontman at heart. Dressed in a suit and tie, he made a sharp entrance and after an hour of frenetic, inventive tunes this one-man band was dripping sweat over his console.
Unlike those faceless electronica artists whose contracts apparently demand they look bored while lurking behind a laptop, Doyle performed as if his life depended on it — frantically twisting knobs, mauling his keyboard and wrestling with a bass guitar. Perhaps that early failure spurred him on.
He showed off his yearning vocal over waves of euphoric synths on Dripping Down and sang with real emotional range amid the smacking beats of Looking For Someone.
Although he was too cool to make hay with the fitting lyrics for this venue on Heaven, How Long, Doyle was up for some head-banging during Underworld-style dance anthem Hinterland.
For an encore, he debuted a new song, Carousel, based around somnolent synths and a woozy croon; it promised great things for the next album.
The glum projections were about a decade behind his superstar DJ rivals but it hardly mattered. Doyle’s stirring presence and songwriter’s sensibility elevated his bedroom tunes into something uniquely memorable.
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