Evian Christ - Revanchist (LP)

Revanchist lands like a long‑tensed exhale. Evian Christ spent years turning club nights into a kind of secular ritual, seeding Trance Party across the UK and Europe while devotees waited for a full album. When it finally arrived in October 2023 on Warp, it felt less like a debut and more like a thesis. Joshua Leary has been building toward this since the Kings And Them days and the Tri Angle EP Waterfall, and if you run the lineage forward through his work on Kanye West’s Yeezus (he’s credited on I’m In It), the through line makes sense. He was always chasing that cliff‑edge mix of pressure and euphoria. Revanchist bottles it.

Drop the needle and you hear how he controls space. The kicks are granite, but not just loud for the sake of it. They punch holes so the synths can flare and recede, like light through stage fog. On Embers, which teased the album’s sensibility ahead of release, still hits like a flare fired across a cold night sky. Supersaws scream, then thin to a razor, and somewhere beneath it all there’s a human voice, treated into something devotional. He’s not shy about the trance DNA. He grew up in the north of England where this stuff blasted out of hatchbacks and seaside fairgrounds. The record treats those memories with respect and a bit of menace, folding them into modern sound design that would swat a weak PA. Play any cut from Revanchist on a club system and you can feel the room seize to attention.

The arrangement choices are smart. Evian Christ knows when to let a figure loop into hypnosis and when to break the grid with a sudden ritardando or a choral swell. It’s big music, but there’s air around it. The stereo field is used like a proscenium; synths rush from the wings, then freeze mid‑leap. That theatrical sense tracks with his parties, which have always treated trance less as nostalgia and more as ritual. The payoff sections here feel earned because the build is patient and tactile. He’s happy to let a snare figure march on its own for bars, or to starve the kick so the return reads like daylight after a blackout.

Warp is a snug home for it. The label has decades of experience with maximal, system‑testing electronic records, and the cut here gives the low end a wide runway. If you’re the type to obsess over pressings, Revanchist vinyl suits the music. The heft of the kick drums and the glassy highs translate well, and the artwork looks fantastic at 12 inches. It’s the sort of album you want visible in your living room, spine out, daring friends to ask. If you’re hunting for Evian Christ vinyl or trying to buy Evian Christ records online, this is the one to start with, and it sits neatly next to old Tri Angle‑era pieces if you still have them. I caught a copy at a Melbourne record store while traveling, then saw it again tucked into a “staff picks” bin at a shop that specializes in vinyl records Australia wide. Both copies vanished by week’s end. That tracks.

Part of the thrill is hearing someone who understands trance as folk culture treat it with compositional care. It’s not nostalgia bait. It’s not a joke. Evian Christ treats the style with the seriousness of a composer and the glee of a DJ who knows exactly when to pull the filter down a hair to make a whole room scream. The melodies are clean and singable. The percussion has teeth. When he lets the arrangement breathe, you can hear detail work borrowed from rap production, a hangover from sessions with American artists a decade ago, now repurposed for cathedrals of fluorescent light.

If you came to Revanchist for a narrative arc, there’s one here: a producer who took his time, learned how to move bodies and rooms, and then delivered a record that respects the crowd while standing up to solitary headphone sessions. If you came for a system workout, you’ll get it too. The album wears repeat plays. It’s also a convincing case for format. Revanchist vinyl amplifies the stakes and scale of the music, and for anyone who files Evian Christ albums on vinyl next to Warp heavyweights, it belongs in that lineage. However you get it, get it loud.