This came out in 2004 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Obviously, Toronto’s Controller.Controller are fans of repetition. And it’s not limited to their name.
Musically, these death-disco recidivists are clearly operating under the belief that if creating something is good, recreating something is even better. So, on their appropriately titled EP History, they dig through the crates and cherry-pick the DNA of a whole host of post-punkers — the yelpy vocals and angular guitars of The Slits, the lurching funk of PiL, the disco-queen sexuality of Blondie, and the dark grooves of New Order, to name just a few — and gene-splice them all together with a dash into a quirky, herky-jerky hybrid so transparently trendy they’re guaranteed to be the toast of the town this year. If they wanna be something other than hasbeens by this time next year, though, they might have to abandon the repetition for a little originality.
