controller.controller - 10/30/04

Toronto’s death disco post punk quintet controller.controller rolled into the CJLO studios on a dark Saturday evening, October 30, 2004, to record 4 songs for Hooked on Sonics.  One of the easiest sessions we ever had to record, they came in, set up, and ran through all four songs in no time, with no extra takes (we found out afterwards that they had forgone a soundcheck for their show later that night in order to do the session, something they got in a lot of trouble for - we only loved them more for this after that, hahah).  We managed to squeeze all 5 of them into the CJLO studios, equipment and all -at the time the most people we've ever squeezed into our little recording space (we'd top this in the future with Fucked Up and Sleepless Nights).

During the session, performing completely in the dark with just their small red lights were on -you can see this by how poorly the pictures and video turned out), the set was a like our own private concert.  Check out the pictures below to see when drummer Jeff's headphones fell onto his face (behind the production glass we thought maybe he had some sorta weird goggles on. what did we know?).  After the song, Jeff explained to us what happend and that, no, those weren't some sorta cool night vision goggles.  Someone from the band also pointed at Jeff and heckled "Ha ha, Geordie Laforge!".  Goooood times.

The kicker though was out of the four songs they performed, three  of them were brand new at the time (they would end up on their full length debut, X-Amounts, which was released almost exactly a year following this session recording), which thus started what we here at CJLO like to call "the controller.controller challenge©".  After this, everytime a new band would to the station, our program director at the time, Alex, would sidle up to the bands in studio and say, "So...y'know, controller.controller performed practically ALL new songs when they came to CJLO..." in an attempt to coax new material, or some sort of exclusive out of them.  Haha, we still continue this tradition...

Hi-fives to controller.controller for setting the bar.  We miss you guys!

*Recorded live in the CJLO Studios October 30, 2004
*Session engineered by Emilie Christiansen & Alex Rabot and mixed by Omar Husain
*Videos filmed (on a hoooorrible camera) and (crudely) edited by Omar Husain
*Aired on Hooked on Sonics