San Vito Ryder has an affinity with two things – London and dirt. They are connected of course. Being surrounded by the capital’s oftentimes insalubrious milieu leads to the post-punk musician making sure to rub grime and other filths into his music.
He’d be far from the first to do this. The chunky bass riff that ignites ‘I Am The King’ is the kind Viagra Boys would wallop through their amplifiers. Regardless, there’s something altogether unhinged about Ryder and his band’s approach.
It’s only their second single but they already sound distrustful of the world around them. This is not casual afternoon listening, it’s gritty and Scorsese-esque in its gutsiness.
At times Ryder sounds like he’s barely in control of his own voice. He warbles intensely over dissonant drones. It is undeferential but compelling all the same.
It’s noisy too. The effect is eerily gothic but the song’s relentless volume does drown the drums somewhat, which sound resultantly like little more than background clattering.
The foreground is entertaining though. Ryder is upfront and imperious. ‘I got the diamonds’ he repeats like an unhinged aristocrat, before declaring to be the king, sounding petulantly arrogant in doing so.
It nears pantomime showmanship when Ryder proclaims that ‘Saint Christopher’s in your loft’, something you’d expect from a straight to DVD B-movie slasher horror. Still, he consistently adopts a convincingly maniacal tone.
Fittingly, there’s something Norman Bates about the single’s artwork. There’s an alluring calmness of the figure’s placid expression. ‘I Am The King’ is the soundtrack to calmness subsiding and something grisly taking its place.
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