Total Control - Typical System

Total Control
Typical System
24 June 2014
Iron Lung

4 stars out of 5

 

If you ever were looking for that missing link between Kraftwerk and The Fall, you can end your search here, with Melbourne’s post-punk outfit Total Control. Just as comfortable with keyboards, drum machines, and faux-German accents as they are with drums, guitars, and caustic growls and barks, Total Control perhaps superficially seem like more of a concept than a living, breathing band, but their instrumental line-up and sound were arrived at through an organic, trial-and-error process rather than through some calculated, image-focused, cynicism made flesh.

Picking out the influences is as easy as hunting cows: Kraftwerk, Joy Division, Gary Numan, etc—though on tracks like “Black Spring,” Dan Stewart & Co. come off as some late-‘60s psychedelic garage band that stumbled across Wire late in life and decided that it was the coolest shit ever (which, of course, it is). “Flesh War” could easily be the result of some clandestine swapping of spit between Gary Numan and The Chameleons. After the relative doom of the bulk of the record, the contrastingly uplifting closer “Safety Net” feels like walking into an air-conditioned café on an oppressively hot day—it’s Total Control’s version of “The Morning Fog” to close off The Ninth Wave. (If you don’t know what that means, you need to study your Kate Bush more carefully. Yes, there will be a test.)

Typical System is a worthy continuation of the project that Total Control initiated with 2011’s Henge Beat. Now, if we could just convince these guys to tour—or at least play a concert more than once a year or so—the world would be a better place. Until then, we have these two pretty nifty LPs to tide us over.

reviewed by Richard Krueger