We’re more than halfway into 2016 and Stalvart John’s EP Intro To Doom Island has a narrative that, at least according to the accompanying footnotes, begins 50 years from now, in 2066.
As a prelude to a full-length concept album that’s still in the works, Intro To Doom Island marks John’s first independent EP release that is more than just the odd single here and there. He is however no stranger to the rich world of electronic music. As a DJ, he began broadcasting music over Internet radio in 2011 with a trance music show. Two years in, and John was broadcasting on as many as seven radio stations around the world, with a noteworthy slot on Afterhours.FM, one of the world’s most popular Internet radio stations for trance music lovers.
Discovering musicSoon came a shift towards house music and then his next evolutionary step — at least in chronological terms — was a retroactive one. “I fell in love with disco in 2013,” says John. “I started playing disco tunes at my shows, and in my radio shows and it sounded great. Digging deeper, I found disco’s other variations like synth-wave and cosmic disco. The more I heard, the more I felt at home. In addition, most of the artists producing music in those spectrums had a mystery element to them and that really added to the allure.”
Cosmic disco and synth-wave are both synthesiser-heavy variants of electronic dance music that borrow keenly from the electronic explorations of pioneering artists like Kraftwerk and Steve Roach, from the abstractions of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, as well as from avant-garde pop producers like Brian Eno, and new-wave heroes like David Byrne of Talking Heads. Both styles are spatially dense and feature-rich, far removed from the minimalistic house and techno that’s currently fighting EDM tooth and nail for world domination.
A definite narrativeIntro To Doom Island is three parts-long, clocking in at a little less than 16 minutes in total runtime. Each of its individual parts comes banded together with a location and footnote. Unlike most music that’s packaged today and released devoid of a story, even the titles here definitely play a role in the narrative of Intro To Doom Island , and quite accurately so.
The first, ‘Sunrise’, includes geographic coordinates that, when plugged into a navigation system, point to a nondescript warehouse-like location in the city of Bangalore. It’s flanked by the Isolation Hospital and the Resurrection Church: real names, in case you’re wondering. ‘Sunrise’ begins on a bed of synthesiser swirls, grand and operatic in tone signifying the dawn of day, perhaps while looking out through a spacecraft or looking straight at one in descent.
‘Daytime Disco’ is set one year after ‘Sunrise’, in the year 2067, 145 light years from the fictional planet of Dromodome and 12 light years from another fictional celestial body called Norka. The track takes things up a notch in both speed and intensity. It’s all here though: funky space bass, plenty of percussive elements that though repetitive , never quite tire the ears. It even has a robotic vocal line oddly reminiscent of Daft Punk and their ilk, plus the ascending synthesiser lines common to many cosmic disco songs. All in, it’s a track with enough variation to keep things interesting over six and a half minutes.
Finally, ‘DuskDrive’ comes three months later in the year 2067, located somewhere in outer space 92 light years from Nutrone-EU, 56 light years from Spet-TTRC. In John’s own words, this song “shows how the new planet looks like from the ship”. Space talk aside, it’s a song that could equally shake a dance floor and provide a fitting soundtrack to a sunset drive. It doesn’t hurt that it harkens back to the sophisticated space disco of Norwegian master producer Prins Thomas, admittedly one of John’s many top-order influences, helping close out the EP with style aplenty.
Much on offerIt’s a refreshing change to hear something come out of the country that doesn’t stick to the popular script. The EP thus succeeds in not just offering a preview to John’s upcoming full-length release and the inner workings of a unique musical mind. It also helps to bring attention to other variants of dance music that haven’t quite taken off in India.
The author is a freelance writer
Intro to Doom Islandis out today on Bandcamp.
