Controller Controller

As Controller.Controller prepare to release their first full-length album, we are asked to consider the “X-amounts”. What are the elusive ingredients that set this band – and, perhaps more importantly, this record – apart from all others? Where will this collection of songs take us? This is, after all, the band that called its first EP, History, thus setting it along a continuum of music past, present and future. Perhaps the key to X-Amounts is the way singer Nirmala Basnayake injects the frequently staccato rhythms with warmth, longing and memorable melodies. When she pleads “Don’t go” on the spare and eerie song, “The Raw No,” there’s no specific destination leading her subject astray, but the danger of detachment is reason enough not to separate. Maybe the heart of the band is wrapped within the tight confines of Ronnie Morris’s bass lines, clinging unflinchingly to Jeff Scheven’s disco beats while fighting off a laser-guided guitar assault. While Scott Kaija and Colwyn Llewelyn-Thomas have a reputation for guitar lines that stab and dance, X-Amounts’ “Tigers Not Daughters” begins with a rumbling riff that would do Slayer proud. There are no e... more...