Asleep at the Switch

As I once again hastily prepare to swim towards my yearly visit to Austin, Texas for SXSW 2009 next week, the perfect soundtrack for all my last-minute packing and skin-of-my-teeth scheduling has revealed itself: Death Control, the new CD by boy wonder Night Control is a headphone symphony of controlled chaos. Swirling melodies bracketed by echo-chamber vocals dip and weave amongst alone-in-the-bedroom guitars cranked in the red. Tobin Sprout would give his third ball to write something as epic as East Side, while Star 131 is like one of those impossible-to-imagine-it-being-played-live Ariel Pink concoctions that seems to exist only in the composer’s cerebellum. No Making and Two Hard are the somnambulant anthems last year’s Atlas Sound release kept promising but upon which it never delivered. The entire CD burrows itself into your soul and sets up camp while never overstaying its welcome. I hope Kill Shamen sells a million copies of this mother so we’ll get 10 more follow-up collections like this in the future. I, for one, can't wait for the next one.