EVILS - Hello Children Everywhere

There’s a very apt sample used by EVILS during ‘Bad Computer’, a kind of explanatory note for the rationale to ‘Hello Children Everywhere’: “It sort of feels rhythmic and bouncey, it’s full of what we call syncopation”, is said in a female, very acute English accent as though we’re being given a 60s design lesson.

This is the world of the one man EVILS, whose penchant for playing in a children’s wendy house has earned him notoriety in his native Cardiff, and farther across the parameters of the Bristolian bay opposite. His first album proper, ‘Hello Children Everywhere’ has all the usual hints and colourations of his work – the superb EP ‘Give Me Evils’ from 2007 among these – including heavy use of recorded voice samples, computive bleeps and murmurs, a feel of gaming and an indecipherable love of French techno.

The latter is most evident on the computer generated voices mash-up of ‘The End of the World’. The bubbling samples and moog variations are the kind of Simian Mobile Disco, hands-in-the-air inducing aspects that make this number pretty suave. Unlike Daft Punk’s use of distorted voices (we’re thinking ‘Around the World’ here), EVILS is rarely repetitive and altogether intended to be alienating. It’s a trait that sometimes falls flat, an over-reliance on samples that are needed to bring character to the tracks but rarely engage with the listener.

Much like ‘The End of the World’, EVILS produces ‘White Dwarf’, which features a Tron-like sonic warfare of bleeps and fuzz, from which the bass emerges stamping all over the place. Slipping into ‘Red Eyes’, which is more bass-reliant, the knob twiddling becomes more apparent where gaps are enforced and a slowly revolving melody on keys spirals in and out of view. This is short lived as we swiftly get thrown full throttle into a round of drum and bass, playful and with added animal tweets and dubby bass.

The funereal whisps on the title track show his comfort with blending almost symphonic electronica with more experimental touches, like a clash of glockenspiel here and a smattering of drilling noise. Altogether very little happens on this track, but it provides an expansive mid-point to the album.

Comparatively, ‘Computer Says Kill’ samples voices repeating the album title, and may find it’s doppleganger in the work of Mr Scruff or even Kitsuné’s latest flings. Choppy and sporadic, ‘Computer Says Kill’ has a disorientating music box/Nintendo effect stuck in the middle ground of otherwise jacked up synths and drum machine.

The resulting twelve tracks are a mixture of influences and characters, but all sit within the Euro-dance vibes of yesteryear as opposed to blazing a trail. Where it really works is when EVILS appears unafraid to expose the gaps in the samples, to detract from them by building up dense layers of orchestrated electronica and techno filters through.

With stiff competition from the continent, if you’re going to do French techno justice (no pun intended), it has to be at a level beyond the pings and pops of the Gameboy. As an immensely interesting artist, it may be that perhaps EVILS is one to both see and hear rather than engaging in sensory deprivation.