SAN VITO RYDER STRUTS ONTO THE SCENE WITH NEW SINGLE ‘CRYSTAL CRUELLA’
You’d be forgiven for thinking Crystal Cruella was a Nick Cave song. Or a Josh Homme track. San Vito Ryder‘s new single drips with swagger and oozes primordial darkness, promising smoke-filled mind alteration in four-minutes-thirty-four.
San Vito Ryder has been releasing music for the past few years, a track here, an interview there. Crystal Cruella is the lead single from his debut EP, Taste My Charm, which is out 15th March, and is being celebrated with a live show at Camden’s Black Heart on the 29th. A fitting venue – San Vito Ryder’s whole vibe can be encapsulated in two words as “black heart.”
Black heart, but draped in velvet and dripping red. Much like his first two tracks, 2023’s I Am The King and 2022’s Tree Lily, Crystal Cruella thrives on round punchy bass and baritone guitar, like surf-rock’s bad acid trip. The production is ramped up here – the bass is clearer, the guitars are all dirt and fuzz against the vocals’ bite, and the drums, played by The Wytches‘ singer Kristian Bell, boom, like the echo of distant church bells from a time forgotten. Taste My Charm was recorded and mixed on tape, all analog, and you can feel it in the viscerality of the production.
Taste My Charm promises a literary journey, one where every song tells a story, weaving together the lives of the characters over the course of the EP. Crystal Cruella is about choosing between the light and the dark, life and death. “Oh baby hit me, I want to feel bad.”
It opens with just delicate bass and vocals, welcoming you with a false sense of safety, until San Vito sneers “my baby cares for me…. to die-ya,” and it explodes into screaming full-band riffage. When we go back to just the bass, this time we’re accompanied by snarls. Welcome to the dark side, good luck finding the exit. The track continues, pulsing along into an extended guitar solo. You can feel it gyrate. If this track is anything, it’s neo-noir-punk-cool.
By the end of it, though, San Vito Ryder takes you out the back door with some shoobedoo wa wa’s, forgoing lyrics for the final verse. You don’t need them, in your mental state. It leaves you in the alley, still foggy and dissociating.
San Vito Ryder and The Churchbell Silencers will play an intimate EP launch show at London’s Black Heart, Camden on 29th March TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE
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