(Electropop / Synthpop / New Wave) Controlxoxo - Control - 2013, MP3, 320 kbps

Dark electropop brandishing deep, sultry vocals, driving guitar and huge synth hooks.

- GALEN HAWTHORNE, Huffington Post
"The year is 1986. Your best goth friend has just alphabetized his casette collection. Then, in a drunken fit of equal parts passion and apathy, he smashes every plastic casing and Frankensteins the magnetic tape confetti of New Order, Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, Pixies, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Morrissey, and countless other groups together in a chic post punk synth pop dark wave pile. In a flash of futuristic neon dance-powered magic, it reconstitutes itself into a shining black CD with one word printed on it: Control.
Control is a dark album. The music, the vocals, and the production all create a certain shadowy feeling, a dark corner in a night club for the ghosts of the living. Refrains like "I can't run far enough from you," "Your love's a corpse," and "Drown in me" betray a dusk of soul not often heard in a record with so many potential singles.
Control is a poetic album. Each line of each lyric seems as though it was crafted and tweaked a million times for perfect scansion and emotion. Heavy lyrical phrases like "Raise your bottle to the sky, to your love, to the death of a god who sat and watched you suffer" ride far lighter than they should on an upbeat and danceable wave of synths and guitars.
Control is a theatrical album. Driving down the strip at two AM watching the traffic lights blink yellow to the beat of "Wednesday Night Break-In," your world melts into the movie you wish it was. Each track tempts the listener with just a glimpse of another facet of the musical artistry of Joseph Mayfield, Dominic Rabalais and Joey Del Re. As the record winds down, Joseph reads an excerpt from his short story Decisions Of Skin, the gloomy humor of which breaks up the record and prepares one for the last few tracks, setting you down in a satisfied shadow.
For a first release, Control is as solid as it gets and there's no telling where they'll be able to go from here with the right fan base. If you have a single dancing bone in your gloomy, gothy body, consider picking it up, because for a group so dark, the future is bright."
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CONTROLxoxo is a surprising sound coming out of the dark dirt roads that line the back ways of America’s heartland.
Joey Del Re and Joseph Mayfield formed in a desire to engage people with music that would stimulate their minds as well as their hearts and bodies. Obsessed with old Americana culture, the two started out playing traditionals until the boredom of the sit down crowd left them craving more. Turning to their other love of ’80s electro style experimentation, they started to fuse dance beats with the writing style of personal experience and struggle that is so rich and honest within old Americana. Soon joining up with Dominic Rabalais, CONTROLxoxo received a new form of influence in the style of a punky pop synthesis that added a powerful dynamic to the already original sound brewing within their creation.

Joseph Mayfield (vocals),
Dominic Rabalais (programming, guitars, synths, background vocals),
Joey Del Re (programming, guitar, synths, background vocals)