Angelika Express, a German cult indie rock band (wait, this will get slightly more interesting soon – promise) had a song a couple of years ago mocking the drones of “artists” and “media people” flocking to Berlin like the proverbial fat kids to the ice cream truck. Of course, creative types have always been drawn towards the formerly divided city (Bowie being the most well-known example), but the song presciently described a city full of hedonistic, but often vacant, wannabe-DJs and writers who had come with high hopes but ultimately made Berlin a more boring place. In the past few years, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs have made It’s Blitz! in a Berlin studio, the “Berghain” was named the best club in the world (a title it relinquished this year), Berlin DJane Ellen Alien’s BPitch label has been getting more and more attention, and British musicians from dubstep producer Emika to Travis’ Fran Healy reside there. It’s probably fair to say the hype has reached a bit of a saturation point.

So why make an album based on Berlin and its (admittedly manifold) political and cultural monuments and contradictions? We’re asking because this is, on the face of it, what the Australian band Black Cab have done with Call Signs.

Opening, fittingly, with what sounds like a slowed-down “line busy”-tone, its opening track proper is called “Church in Berlin”, whose monolithic, repetitive beat and droning, layered guitar chords recall German Krautrock legends Neu! (plus the high, bleepy guitar line is vaguely reminiscent of ‘Neuschnee’). Over that, singer Andrew Coates warbles barely intelligible lines about a “patriotic daze” and “a mission” being over – at least that’s what it sounds like, because not only is his style audibly influenced by Ian Curtis, but the vocals take a back seat on this record, letting the meaty bass, wave-y synths and crashing drum cymbals create a sound carpet so thick you’d need a drill to pierce it.

The little interludes, which break the record into three parts and consist of little more than vocal samples and atmospheric noise, again hint at Neu! and some of the song titles (‘Sonnenallee’, which is a street in Berlin, and ‘Dresden Dynamo’, which references a football club in eastern Germany) and ‘Sonnenallee’’s techno beats are testament to an interest in things teutonian, but without a lyric sheet it’s difficult to find concrete evidence that this is an album that could only have been made in or inspired by Berlin. Instead, it is an impressive effort of looking at themes of love and loss in musically different, but always emotionally literate ways.

There are agreeable echoes of Ride-esque shoegaze (‘Rescue’, ….), and nods to the Cold Wave revival of bands like Former Ghosts (‘Lost & Falling’) but among the best tracks on offer has to be the gorgeously dark folk-goth-pop of ‘Black Angel’. Its comparative simplicity and catchiness provide a welcome focal point for the album as a whole and a contrast to the darker tracks. Berlin, in the case of Call Signs, has inspired something truly special.