EVIAN CHRIST

Evian Christ (b. Joshua Leary) is an Ellesmere Port-based musician, producer and music programmer signed to WARP and DONDA/Sony ATV Publishing. Initially finding recognition for his production contributions to Billboard-topping albums by Kanye West and Travis Scott, and subsequently as the founder of the enduringly influential TranceParty event series, Christ’s recent years have seen him lead an idiosyncratic range of projects that enquire into the legacy of Trance in contemporary cultural life. Revanchist (2023), Christ’s debut album, explores the genre’s latent potential to evoke, beyond Euphoria, the fullest feeling of the Sublim

Revanchist’s release marks the culmination of ideas first explored in The Trance War (1998—ongoing) (2015, ICA London) and Re:Load (2017, Moscow International Biennale) — a series of installations by Christ and long-time collaborator David Rudnick presenting the artists’ personal archive of Trance materials alongside original works which drew unlikely parallels between themes and imagery of loss, third-way neoliberalism, dogs, Ibiza Euphoria and the Greek government-debt crisis. This conceptual framework underpins the world of TranceParty, the perpetually in-demand event series founded by Christ in 2013. Remaining one of London’s most adventurous and popular clubnights ten years in, Christ’s programming at TP boasts early-career shows from the likes of Travis Scott, Bladee, Sophie, Arca, Yves Tumor, Bad Boy Chiller Crew, AG Cook, VTSS and countless other giants of contemporary electronic music, often in unlikely combinations with legendary acts from the golden eras of UK Dance. Ultra (2020) — “a demolished wave of Trance Euphoria” — marked Christ’s arrival as a fully-fledged WARP artist, demonstrating an emerging command of an abstractly destructive musical vocabulary. Revanchist (2023), the culmination of this idiosyncratic range of projects, is the long-awaited debut album by Evian Christ, scheduled for release by WARP on 20th October 2023

REVANCHIST

The eight-track record explores the latent potential in Trance to evoke, beyond Euphoria, the fullest feeling of the Sublime. Revanchist draws from an unlikely and expansive pool of influences; compositing, at once, the suffocating throttle of Demiurge-era Emptyset (2011); the worldliness of Madonna and William Orbit’s Ray Of Light LP (1998); the acute uncanniness of Laibach’s Across The Universe (1988); and a highly stylized approach to mixing and sound design primarily inspired by Sasha’s seminal Xpander EP (1999)

On Embers, Revanchist’s opening track and lead single, perhaps best encapsulates Christ’s inclination towards the total annihilation of Trance’s default affects; rapturous supersaws meet a tempest of indecipherable noise, mangled 808s and broken shards of Defected Records gospel house acapellas. Nobody Else shows reverence to classic Balearic Trance and its associated imagery — a widescreen view of a supermassive Iberian sunset; Apocalypse Now meets Café Del Mar. Its spacious breakdown, featuring an impressionistic treatment of vocals lifted from Clairo’s North, provides one of Revanchist‘s most strikingly fragile moments. Yxguden, the record’s final single, is accompanied by a music video directed by early computer graphics pioneer and Tiesto-collaborator Micha Klein, who choreographs a meeting between Drain Gang’s Bladee and a Nordic Bronze Age cave drawing of an axe-wielding Moundperson. Utilising a vocal hook most widely recognised for its use in DJ Hixxy’s “More and More” (2007), Yxguden’s chaotic arrangement jump-cuts between moments of gauzy ambiance and frenzied exhilaration. Run Boys Run, Revanchist’s concluding track, sees Christ summon an enraptured chorus of bending strings and soaring choral threnoi, eventually resting on a single sub-bass note, held to exhaustion

Revanchist’s album artwork, designed by David Rudnick, features a hand-drawn depiction of a crystal-forged newborn, emerging against a backdrop compositing Lars Hertervig’s Gamle Furutrær (1865) and a still from Chris Bucklow’s Jerusalem (1994). The album was mixed and mastered by Chris Pawlusek and Christ in Goa, India