Negative Gain – 6th November 2026
Christopher Nosnibor
For far too long, even within the sphere of genre fiction, sci-fi was (and to an extent, still is) dismissed as being something of a lesser form. Much of this, however, is due to the misconception that science fiction is all about spaceships and interplanetary travel, wars with telepathic extraterrestrials and the like. Sure, there are plenty of books and movies which are about those things, but most of those are actually fantasy works set in space rather than true science fiction. Star Wars is one of the most popular and well-known examples of space fantasy: it’s not science fiction. Perhaps M. John Harrison’s The End of Everything winning the Booker Prize will go some way towards changing that (although, perhaps somewhat ironically, alien invasion is the device which precipitates the book’s eery, post-apocalyptic world).
The most compelling sci-fi explores – through the medium of fiction – what may happen if given technologies are developed in a given way. Many such works are cautionary tales. Michael Chritchon’s Prey stands out as a particularly keen consideration of nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and AI. But it feels as if the tech bros and multinational corporations have assimilated the entirety of the dystopian sci-fi corpus and taken it as a blueprint – because so many of the darkest futures depicted within these fictions have come to pass, the works feeling more like reportage than speculation.
It’s within this context that we come to CTRL CLICK’s Systems For Disassembly, which they say is ‘not a concept record with a linear story. It’s an album of fourteen songs that live in the same world.’ That world is the one we inhabit, a world of ‘hospital wards and server farms, HR meetings and back alleys, pharmacy glow and the supermarket hum’.
They explain that amidst the thematic strands, there is a core focus: ‘The songs circle technology, conformity, mortality, addiction and corporate culture, and keep returning to one question: how do you stay human inside systems that want to classify, measure, medicate and monetize you?’
Spend half an hour on any of the big social media platforms, and you may be inclined to conclude that for many, it’s simply not possible. But in a better world – and we need to always hope for better – people should be able to live by just one rule: ‘don’t be a twat’. But capitalism itself is, by its very nature, dehumanising. Some bosses tell their staff they need to leave their personal issues at the door, but the reality of survival in a capitalist world is that you need to leave your soul at the door, or, to be safe, at home.
‘Angel of Death’ drags the listener into a dark, claustrophobic space, with a dense yet stark industrial electronic sound dominated by thumping mechanised beats and agitated bass. Discord and overlaid incidentals heighten the discomfort. Instantly, you’re there: trapped within hellish confines and no prospect of escape. ‘Insolent’ and ‘Good as Dead’ capture the essence of the endless drudgery of employment: your life is not your own, and living to work is not living. The execution very much calls to mind the likes of Mussolini Headkick and Controlled Bleeding, and early Revolting Cocks.
It wouldn’t be a technoindustrial album without samples, and they’re incorporated judiciously throughout Systems For Disassembly. And, like the systems the album depicts – all systems of oppression, systems of control, systems of manipulation, systems of suppression, systems of surveillance. Keep telling yourself you have freedom of choice and will. You might even believe it: after all, it’s a democracy, right? Right.
‘Eviscerate’ presents yet another suffocatingly dense groove, and it’s danceable in a repetitive, robotic way, but it sure as hell isn’t a feelgood dancefloor anthem.
All of the album’s fourteen tracks are around the four-minute mark, giving a run time in the region of an hour: and during that time, there’s no let-up, and CTRL CLICK mine that dark seem deep and with an almost obsessive commitment. It’s not an album constructed with variety or standout songs in mind, and instead, bludgeons the listener with its relentlessness. The effect is cumulative. If there’s a musical equivalent of onomatopoeia, Systems For Disassembly is its very definition. Systems For Disassembly doesn’t rage against the machine, it takes you inside the machine and recreates, sonically, the experience of a life of entrapment.
‘In League’ and ‘Slip Up’ buzz with overloading circuitry and muffled voices – the voices of the doomed, the damned – people trapped on the treadmill, just like you. There are some potent images to be found among the lyrics, and Systems For Disassembly would make for a compelling – if terrifying – basis for a movie. It’s as bleak and bereft of humanity as it gets, and each track drags us further through the sterile corridors of hell. And each trach seems yet more hellish than the one before. By the arrival of ‘Left for Dead’, my inner voice is screaming for mercy, but there are still a further four songs to go, and if you think they’re any gentler or kinder, you probably think your boss is going to give you a ten percent raise and additional paid holiday at Christmas. The greater likelihood is that your position will be replaced by AI a week before Christmas. Sucker. Your boss doesn’t care. Capitalism doesn’t care.
We’re in electro horror territory on ‘Successful Night’, and ‘Malignant’ goes darker and heavier still – or perhaps I’m just feeling that cumulative effect more acutely. But the final salvoes of ‘Piece of Work’ – reminiscent of Ministry circa Twitch – and ‘(Kill) the Vampire’ kick hard. Crawling out of the album alive feel like a feat. You’ve escaped the Matrix… only to discover that you’re still there in the real-world version.
AA
