New Audio: Total Fucking Darkness Shares a Sardonic and Uneasy Banger

Besides being an awesome band name, Total Fucking Darkness features: 

• Stars‘ Torquil Campbell 
• Young Galaxy‘s Stephen Ramsey
• English studio genius and synth player Tom McFall, whose engineering credits include R.E.M., Bloc Party, Twin Shadow and Regina Spektor 

Earlier this year, the trio shared “Desolation Boys,” a slick yet chaotic synthesis of Tweekend-era Crystal Method and Come With Us-era Chemical Brothers-like big beat, LCD Soundsystem and deep house with glistening synth arpeggios delivered with a nihilistic, tongue-in-cheek absurdity.

Created in the final hours of a manic, 72-hour writing spree with McFall flying in from London, “Desolation Boys” encapsulates the band’s volatile energy. The song is anchored around spontaneous, stream-of-consciousness-like lyrics and a raw vocal take where Campbell can be faintly heard yelling “go fuck yourself,” mid-chorus. Who is he yelling at? Himself, perhaps? 

The song reflects the band’s ongoing exploration of themes like the futility of existence, the exciting pointlessness of class war and the rejection of everything that doesn’t BANG. 

The trio returns with “Take It Easy,” a relentlessly pulsing and unsettling track that pairs propulsive dance floor friendly energy with a tongue-in-cheek and irreverent sense of despair. The song finds the trio daring listeners to embrace the void rather than resist it; to readily acknowledge that the world and everything you know is on fire and there may be little you can do about it. As the old saying goes “Might as well laugh, ’cause it hurts too much to cry.”

The irony of the song’s title isn’t an accident. The song is anchored around a platitudinous phrase used as a bitingly sardonic weapon in an our hellish, at times, Kafka-esque moment.

Written in real-time, “Take It Easy” was born from pure instinct. The trio’s Torquil Campbell wrote the lyrics while listening to the track for the first time, which baffles his bandmates Stephen Ramsey and Tom McFall. And there are sheep. Yeah, sheep.

“There are sheep involved in the track. It’s not the first song I’ve heard with sheep in it this year,” Total Fucking Darkness’ Ramsey says. “If you think about it, songs with sheep in them are an incredibly good sign, because there’s never been a bad song that mentions, or actually features sheep. Think about it.”