The title itself is lifted from 60’s Situationist Guy Debord’s work on the assimilation of mass media into everyday life while the duo will sit for hours debating the relative merits of The Matrix, George Lucas’ THX 1138, Logan’s Run and Fahrenheit 451, and the album as a whole conjures images of totalitarian dystopias and uncertain futures.
"‘Society Of The Spectacle’ the book is about the unreality of reality, how the media changes your thoughts and so on, and a lot of the tracks relate to that stuff" Rob says.
"The first track, ‘Nu Control’, is about the media controlling you. In the past they’d batter you with a bat or a sword, now they have other ways. And we’re part of the system too - the record keeps repeating and repeating until you think ‘fucking hell, it’s doing my head in’".
Repetition is indeed a recurring theme; check ‘Bionic’’s relentless refrain (alcoholic drug addict I am bionic, bionic). It’s like repetitive musical torture - in a good way.
Anyone that tried to decode the Hegel / Gurdjieff / Crowley references across ‘The Owl Of Minerva’ will know what we’re dealing with here: visceral dance/rock with an unusually cerebral message.
The dubstep-inflected ‘Paris In The 20th Century’ was inspired by 'a shitty Jules Verne book' (props to Skream and all that, but we can’t see him slipping in a literary reference among the half-speed bass-bothering) while ‘The Moth’ is about the life and tragic death of Virginia Woolf.
South Central are here to completely redefine the parameters of dance music. To show that one band member posing by a synth does not a crossover act make, and that intense BPMs can propel meaningful ideas.
Tracklisting:
1. Nu Control
2. The Day I Die
3. Bionic
4. Demons
5. S.O.S
6. No Way Back
7. The Fourth Way
8. Paris In The Twentieth Century
9. Anima
10. Crawl (feat. Gary Numan)
11. Society Of The Spectacle
12. The Moth (feat. A Place Of Bury Strangers)