William Doyle Vinyl, CD & Tape 6 Items

Serving up art-pop for the anthropocene, Springs Eternal is the Mercury-nominated, critically acclaimed artist William Doyle’s most ambitious and most playful creation to date. Taking a panoramic view of the ecstasies and agonies of life in the 2020s, the record asks how we exist as fragile flesh and blood – our hearts beating and our minds racing – in an unprecedented, almost unimaginable time of runaway climate destruction and technological expansion.

Springs Eternal presents a strange and thrilling cast of characters – from cowboys to castaways – who just might be Doyle, once or twice removed. “Most of the songs are in the first-person, but rather than being autobiographical, I was trying to imagine hyperreality versions of myself,” Doyle says. “What if decisions I made in my life had resulted in the self of each particular song? How many degrees of separation am I from those realities? It’s a frightening thought, and frightening thoughts often make for good songs.”

Across 11 tracks, we hear from narrators teetering on the precipice of global disaster, heartbreak, addiction, indoctrination and mental illness, until they pass into the great unknown. The lyrics, by turns earnest and ironic, upfront and allegorical, are paired with infectious melodies and often outright swagger. Co-produced by indie superproducer Mike Lindsay (Tunng, Lump) at his Mess studio in Margate, we hear the siren song of the sea washing around pulsating electronics and stirring instrumentation, featuring contributions from musicians Alexander Painter, Genevieve Dawson and Brian Eno.

A recurring theme of water and flooding runs through the record, alluding simultaneously to the global climate crisis and the deluge of overwhelm these parallel-universe Williams are experiencing. “It wasn’t until we were mixing the record that I realised how many water references there are,” Doyle says. “I guess there’s a fluid border between our inner selves and the outside world that allows things to flood in, in unstoppable or perhaps irresistible ways.”

Springs Eternal is the next chapter in the William Doyle sonic odyssey that began with his incarnation as East India Youth (Total Strife Forever, 2014; Culture of Volume, 2015) and developed under his own name, producing the critically acclaimed records Your Wilderness Revisited (2019) and Great Spans of Muddy Time (2021). Alongside his own output, Doyle recently produced Anna B Savage’s celebrated debut album A Common Turn (2021) and plays in Orlando Weeks’ band both live and on his upcoming record.

“Springs Eternal” follows 2021’s critically acclaimed Great Spans of Muddy Time album (10/10 Loud & Quiet, 9/10 Line of Best Fit, 4/5 Mojo, 8/10 Uncut, 5th The Quietus 100 Albums of the Year).

It's nearing a decade since William Doyle released his Mercury Music Prize nominated debut album, Total Strife Forever, as East India Youth in 2014. A year later, he had toured the world and was releasing his second album, Culture of Volume, but it would be another four years before Doyle returned with his third full album, and the first official release under his own name. The dizzyingly ambitious Your Wilderness Revisited arrived in 2019 and was followed last year by the artpop masterpiece, Great Spans of Muddy Time. In the years between leaving the old project behind and re-emerging under his own name, Doyle self-released a string of ambient-leaning albums, The Dream Derealised, Lightnesses Vol I & II and Near Future Residence, which are now to receive a first vinyl pressing via Tough Love. The Dream Derealised is a collection of nine abstract, lo-fi pieces that were recorded during the summer of 2016, when focusing on creating them helped guide Doyle through a "difficult period of anxiety, panic and a regular dissociative feeling called derealisation." At the time, doing something creative in a quick and immediate fashion felt vital to Doyle, carrying him to a new place: "I'm releasing them now as a cathartic measure, and as a message for others who may be going through difficult times themselves. What I told myself at the time, what I can tell you now: You are not in danger. You are not going insane. You are not alone."

Near Future Residence is music for an imagined place based on real ideas; the soundtrack for an ecologically sustainable housing development somewhere in a not-too-distant future Britain. The eleven instrumental pieces here come from a place of optimism, imagining a future that is based on cooperation, community and ecological urbanism. It's music intended to sit in this imagined environment rather than impose upon it, similar in principle to the function of Kanky? Ongaku (Japanese environmental music). The ideas contained on Near Future Residence laid the groundwork for - and can be seen as a companion piece to - the album Your Wilderness Revisited, released to critical acclaim in 2019. Doyle explains how the pieces "were composed in entirely generative ways using samples of instruments, synthesisers and field recordings I've collected and developed throughout 2018. In generative composition, rules are set and parameters are chosen and then put into motion, the results constantly changing and surprising.

Lightnesses Vol. I & II sees Doyle create what we might understand as true ambient music - that is, music intended for the background that wasn't composed as such, but allowed to blossom out of the setting of some rules and parameters, played by sounds he created and then resampled. The deceptively simple, droning pieces are unlike anything Doyle has made before or since. "During their creation I'd often take photographs of the light coming in through the windows of the two houses I lived in during their creation. I'd post these on social media and they became quite popular parts of my output. This music was intended to accompany those visuals. The first volume's photo is a double exposure of the sun shining in on my notebook and my hand, whereas the photo for the second volume was taken in Joshua Tree Park, California as I saw our tail lights illuminate one of the trees."

Great Spans Of Muddy Time Is The Fourth Album From Mercury Music Prize Nominated Artist William Doyle, And The Second Under His Own Name (Having Dropped His Earlier East India Youth Moniker). Born From Accident But Driven Forward By Instinct, The Album Was Built From The Remains Of A Catastrophic Hard-Drive Failure. With His Work Saved Only To Cassette Tape, Doyle Was Forced To Accept The Recordings As They Were - A Sharp Departure From His Process On The Previous Record, 2019's Your Wilderness Revisited, Which He Crafted Over Four Long Years. (Line Of Best Fit Described It As "A Dazzlingly Beautiful Triumph Of Intention" And Metro Declared It An Album Not Only Of The Year, But "Of The Century".)"Instead Of Feeling A Loss That I Could No Longer Craft These Pieces Into Flawless 'Works Of Art', I Felt Intensely Liberated That They Had Been Set Free From My Ceaseless Tinkering," Doyle Says Of Great Spans. These Unedited, Often Improvised Pieces, Free From Fine-Tuning, Plunged Him Into Uncharted Waters. What Remains Is Doyle's Unique Exploration Of Pop, Art-Rock, Ambient And Idiosyncratic Compositions, Married With A Voice That Deftly Glides From Tender Restraint To Soaring Peaks, But Its Expression Is Rawer And Less Polished Here."It's A Kind Of Englishman-Gone-Mad, Scrambling Around The Verdancy Of The Country's Pastures Looking For Some Sense," Doyle Says. "It Has Its Seeds In Robert Wyatt, Early Eno, Robyn Hitchcock, And Syd Barrett," He Adds, Crediting Also Bowie's Ever-Influential Berlin Trilogy, And Highlighting A Far Less Expected Muse: Monty Don, Presenter Of Gardener's World, Doyle's Lockdown Addiction. "He Once Described Periods Of Depression In His Life As Consisting Of 'Nothing But Great Spans Of Muddy Time'," Doyle Says. "When I Read That Quote I Knew It Would Be The Title Of This Record. I Would Also Be Lying If I Said It Didn't Chime With My Mental Health Experiences As Well." What Results Is A Beautiful Ode To The Power Of Accident, Instinct And Intuition.Riyl: Brian Eno, Roby...