i go to myspace of crystal castles and what i find there:
"DOE DEER 12” vinyl: 500 COPIES.APRIL 17, 2010.1 TRACK FROM THE NEW ALBUM AND 3 UNRELEASED FROM 2004."
complete with a cover that could drive even a shy, reserved girl like me crazy.
because the crystal castles are the necessary evil in the life of any overgrown teenager, coming of age in the midst of the technological age and finding in this duo all the nihilism of a historical period too neurotic for warm hearts and thinking heads; the right compromise between a hypnotic 1980s video game, softcore porn and the melancholy we lost along the way.
“doe deer” is the first taste of crystal castles' second album, and i assure you i can't get it out of the player; a track as short as it is violent i haven't heard since 1997. in a little over a minute and a half i find all the anger i had lost, managing to channel it into a single track. fast as lightning is like scratching the teacher's blackboard and not having the strength to plug your ears, a necessary noise.
doe deer's 12” vinyl is already a fetish to absolutely own and consume, but i already know it will be impossible to get it.
instead, crystal castles' second album will be released on june 7 and here i take the liberty of pointing out the resounding lack of originality of the duo, who merely titled the new album exactly like the first: crystal castles.
but little matter.
the next step for crystal castles will be to conquer the widest slice of the audience you can have for a party-animal band. You will hear more about them. because they are that novelty you don't expect, that bombshell ready to burst when menno expect it, destroying everything within range.
ethan kath and the beautiful alice glass are an explosion of energy, hard and pure. powerful as a kick in the gums they are ready to make you dance next april 28 in milan, waiting as soon as possible for the release of “crystal castles.”
the differences in crystal castles IIare subtle, but the key advance made is one of generosity.
if crystal castles’s self-titled debut made it sound like pac-man was only half his then-nearly 28 years and wore down listener resistance by more or less reiterating their limited bleeps-n’-loops musical apparatus over a punishing 16 tracks, their follow-up is sophomoric only in the sense that it, too, is self-obsessedly self-titled. otherwise, the album is a pretty significant leap forward for the redolent electronic punk duo-cum-perpetual look at this fucking hipster fodder. they’ve moved on from huffing paint thinner to farting in your mouth while you are sleeping. the differences are subtle, but the key advance made is one of generosity.
which is not to say that they’ve given themselves a complete overhaul. though the atari blips are largely missing this time around, the retroactive (retro-passive?) synthetic sensualism and 13th-hour, fourth meal-fueled stamina are in full fettle. it’s just that this time they’re not juggling two game controllers at once. they’re too busy, judging by their softened song titles, gazing into the “celestica” skies, spending one “year of silence,” baptizing “doe deer,” offering “empathy” to those “not in love,” battling “suffocation” and “fainting spells,” and getting a “pap smear” in “vietnam.”
that last track marks one of the strongest and best departures from their earlier efforts; it’s a widescreen, temperamental, high-eq journey into the sonic battleground, with a bassline that whirs like helicopter blades, tinkling synthesizer lines sprouting like lamentations, and chopping on alice glass’s vocals that, for once, suggests something more ominous than mere effect. other highlights in gravitas include: “violent dreams,” whose airy michael mann atmospherics suggest alan braxe and fred falke’s ’80s revivalism; “not in love,” which bittersweetly refuses to resolve the tension in its progressions, storing heartbreak in those chord clusters like squirrels hoard nuts; and “year of silence,” with reverberating kicks, call-and-response vocal lines, and an Italo-chic synth countermelody straight out of legowelt’s “congo zombie,” pure grindhouse sophistication.
but with that sophistication comes a tradeoff. for as irritating and limited as their first album was in stretches, its driving intensity was undeniable. the whirring effects in “1991” were like every sound effect from williams’s “black knight” consolecompressed into two incredibly jacked-up minutes. at its worst moments, the album still gave off the impression of trying to dance under duress. there was a through line of strain just waiting for synthesis. in contrast, the superior but occasionally milquetoastcrystal castles: book twoinadvertently underscores the pitfalls of maturity and liberation.
(alice glass of crystal castles on stage in london, 2009. photograph: rachel bevis/rex)
the 8-bit electro-punk hipsters may no longer tour in a converted riot van with stab-proof wheels, but they're still on the defensive.
here's something you won't read every day: ethan kath from crystal castles is an extremely nice chap. if you've ever read anything about the world's new favourite toronto-born electro duo, kath is always – but always – presented as a grumpy, uncommunicative, passive-aggressive arse.
if "new rave" brought them to our attention, crystal castles have long since outlasted it. masters of what has become known as 8-bit, or chiptune,crystal castles build brilliant records from sounds you might find down the back of a games console. to date, nearly 8 million have watched five different crystal castles videos on youtube; this is a band so of the moment they've been on the soundtrack to skins more often than a squeaking bedspring. they are this generation's chemical brother and sister.
anyway, there's nothing even slightly grumpy or uncommunicative about the 28-year-old in a black hoodie and skinny jeans i meet in the banana-yellow offices of a 1,000-capacity nightclub in an unattractive suburb of milan. he apologises for his hair being odd lengths (apparently castles screamer alice glass cuts it when he's not looking). he tells me about the livestock and lack of windows on his grandfather's farm in calabria (the southern-most "toe" in the Italian "boot"). he tells me about the band's old van (a decommissioned riot squad vehicle with "stab-proof" tyres) and how he had to get rid of his first drummer when the tub-thumper's ruinous liking for cocaine derailed a huge show in tokyo. he tells me about how many links to illegal downloads of his new record there are on twitter. he tells me about how those links all lead to a version of the album that includes the wrong edit of future single, celestica. he has a lot to say for himself, all of it interesting, and each story is delivered with the same engaging, garrulous enthusiasm. when he offers to nip out and chase up glass – she's having a shower, having just woken up at 6.30pm – i think to myself what a pleasure it is to meet him.
so glass appears, hair still wet, beaming smile, couldn't be more charming, and we sit down for the interview. then something sort of hilarious happens. ethan kath slips into character and becomes "ethan kath out of crystal castles", someone who is, oh dear, quite capable of being a grumpy, uncommunicative, passive-aggressive arse.
i lob an easy one at him to start. tell me about the brain, i say, referring to the battered flight-case full of wounded, half-dead keyboards and old mobile phones that, apparently, provide a lot of the noise and vocal samples that the band use on stage.
"there's no such thing," - he replies with a face like a four-year-old who's just been denied a lollipop. and we're off! "maybe the crew call it that," he says, "but I don't. I'm not emotionally attached to any gear."
so if it all got burnt you wouldn't care?
"there are music shops in every city in the world," offers the man who has built a (well-deserved) mythology on the uniqueness of his sounds and is famous for his hatred of preset technology. "It's no big deal."
in an attempt to teasefriendly ethan back out of the woodwork i go for the least contentious question imaginable.
do your fans react differently in different parts of the world, i smile?
"no," he says, staring. "everywhere hates us the same." except, of course, they don't. outside this venue there are hundreds of young (and not-so-young) fans gathered hours before the doors open, and that's because crystal castles' new album – called, like their first, crystal castles – is a wonderful record that rides the noise/pop knife edge as well as anyone in the world. kath is a songwriter and producer of rare talent, someone who can write songs like celestica or year of silence that are so brilliantly melodic, so grippingly immediate, so joyously pop, that were they on the new kylie minogue album you would throw your hat into the air with the slightly edgy electro pleasure of it all. but he can also write doe deer or birds, pieces that are furious, experimental and abrasive. i am made of chalk sounds like he's shredded a vhs copy of infamous video-nasty i spit on your grave and randomly stuck the bits back together with home-made adhesive. it is both brilliant and terrible. kath is taking chances, and we are lucky to have him. he may, in fact, be the planet's funniest hipster. i certainly found him highly entertaining, i just didn't see the point of the sudden grump attack.
when kath and glass talk about how they came together as crystal castles in the summer of 2005 the room actually comes alive.
"shewas getting high all summer," kath laughs. "i found her on the street; she was higher than anyone i've ever seen in my life."
it's worth pointing out that, at the time, he was in a band with a heroin addict. as a child glass had been a real loner: someone who sat in the corner of her room and wrote "cheesy" poetry, who ran away from home at 14. when she began recording with kath she was just 17, had shaved off half of her hair and completed her look with a filthy eye-patch.
"this punk guy had the infection first," she smiles. "he then went around dabbing his germ-stained finger in everyone else's eye. i had it for three months."
kathsays she was so high that when he wanted to talk to her about the songs they'd recorded together glass would just say, "call me!" and make the phone-to-the-ear movement despite the fact that neither of them had a phone. they still don't, apparently. glass was living with a squeegee merchant called rosa who had a house in downtown toronto and split the rent between 20 people at $100 a month.
"there were a lot of drug punks there," she says. "they'd do really shitty things like heat up metal coat hangers and brand their skulls … "
it seems like everything's back on course, so i mention that what i really like about the record is how it goes noisy one, pop one, noisy one, pop one. that's great sequencing! silence. i move my feet to allow a huge ball of tumbleweed to blow past.
"maybe," says glass, eventually.
"i don't hear them as noise or pop," kath says. "all I hear is one bleak feeling that lasts an hour."
indeed. but year of silence is a big, bright brilliant pop song, i say. it doesn't sound particularly "bleak". interestingly, this may be the exact point where the ghost-like presence of nice ethan rises up from his mortal frame and boards a transatlantic flight back to toronto.
"that's actually insulting," he groans. "that's the opposite of what i was going for. i'm not trying to write pop songs at all. year of silence was something i imagined hearing at some shitty, small goth club."
the duo are playing all over europe on a pre-release tour for the new album, which is coming out on the same label snow patrol are signed to. they've played an nme tour sponsored by topman and they're appearing at the radio 1 big weekend. are these really the decisions of an unambitious band?
"yeah," mutters glass.
"of course," says kath. "because we have no ambition, yet we are in this position. there are 3,000 bands that deserve this more than we do."
no there aren't.
"you don't need ambition to play a show," says glass. "there's not a lot of effort needed … "
two hours later and the venue's full to bursting with goths, metalheads, indie kids, ravers and whatever the italian equivalent of mainstream, gig-happy teens are called. crystal castles' live show is a masterpiece of dark beauty. lit by a pair of brutal strobes they stick to the big-room tunes. glass twists and dives and crawls along the stage hugging a loose strobe to her belly. she is utterly captivating.
kath stands to her right, behind what looks like it might be the brain (except, of course, that doesn't exist), alternately punching out notes and beats, then strapping on a guitar. crystal castles are awesomely concise and effective, a rolling noise that will destroy all competition at any festival this summer.
a couple of days later i email kath to find out if his rather taciturn interview persona is actually all part of some larger crystal castles gameplan. a self-preservation technique perhaps? a perfectly charming email pings back within the hour.
"there is no other person," he writes. "we're quite shy."
on september 13, crystal castles came to houston and caused a small amount of mayhem to ensue.
it was my first time going to a concert at the house of blues, and i wasn’t really sure what kind of crowd to expect. for this show, that crowd turned out to be a lot of hot topic-clad pre-teens and a handful of fist-pumping college guys with their girlfriends — a pretty strange combination, which led to a few dirty looks and snide comments. more than one inebriated troublemaker had to be escorted off the premises during the concert. In summary: it was a little rough in there.
the opening dj was pretty good and managed to keep the crowd hyped for a while. after the first half-hour, though, it became apparent that he was just filling up time, and by the end of the set — a whole hour long — a good portion of the crowd had lost interest. after the opener came a good long wait, during which the drunk girl next to me kept trying to start a “cry-stal ca-stles!” chant. eventually, the huge curtains swept apart, and crystal castles frontwoman alice glass strolled onto the stage smoking a cigarette. that’s when all hell broke loose.
the mass of bodies all around me turned into a single violent, rollicking organism under the effects of ethan kath’s jagged beats and alice’s heavily vocoded yelps. alice, who very much plays along with the strange and savage little-girl image that’s attached to her, frequently threw herself into the crowd without warning and took swigs from a bottle of jack daniel’s on stage. cohort ethan kath did a lot of really good improvised mixing and vocoding, flexing his creative muscles while alice jumped around and screamed into the mic. what a charming duo.
about a half-hour into their set, the band abruptly walked off stage and the curtains closed, to the confusion and frustration of the audience. a minute later a weary-looking man poked his head out of the curtains and announced that we had all rocked out so hard that we set off the fire alarm, and that we would have to wait for the fire marshal to come reset it before crystal castles could come back. thankfully, we didn’t have long to wait before they came back on and played one last chaotic song — “intimate” — from the new album.
alice left the stage with a painful-looking scratch on her cheek and dirty and torn clothes — a state comparable to that of the whole audience. personally, i had fallen on my ass and been kicked in the face by a crowdsurfer, and i heard similar reports from my friends. but i can’t really complain about the wounds; what i can complain about, however, is the lousy way the house of blues staff treated everyone.
we were shoveled out of the venue almost immediately after the music stopped by large and unfriendly men and were then made to throw away our drinks at the door by more large and unfriendly men. my timid request to finish my drink (it was only water) was answered by a string of loud and unnecessary expletives. it really harshed my post-concert mellow.
disrespect from the staff members aside, this show was one of the best i’ve been to in quite a while. crystal castles put every ounce of their energy into the performance, and the audience was responsive in the best way possible. if those guys come back to houston in the future, i seriously recommend going to see them — it’s quite a unique concert experience.
"crystal castles did a secret gig so i went there and we hanged out at their hotel after the show until 4am and it was really fun. It was nice to see them"
"i went to crystal castles gig at irving plaza 2 nights ago. i hadn't seen them over a year, so it was very nice to see them. it was first time to see their gig from v.i.p balcony. they played some new songs. they were really great! then we went to some party at hudson hotel because cc supposed to dj. it was really bad party with horrible cheesy disco music but when ethan started to play good music alice and i and some drug queen (he looked funny) danced so much and it was very fun. then we went to their hotel room and drink. but at this point i was way too drunk and had to run outside of the hotel to puke, so i just had to go home :p in the cab, i puked from window and the cab driver told me to pay $25 and wash his car, but i told him i didn't puke. i was just happy to see them so got too drunk.they were in town only that day and had to fly to london next day.i hope they can have time to shopping with me next time
!the textbelow is translatedfrom spanishusing a translator!
whatwe experiencedthat tuesday in novemberonthe madrid rivierawill probablybe rememberedfor a longtime. the coldthat wason the edge of the manzanaresturnedinto an intense heat that had alice glass as its particular sun. andthe factis that it was rather something very dark, i don't remember seeing anything but shadows. butthatwasmorethan enough. inakind of electro punkorgy, or whateveryou wantto callit, the people in the front rows were struggling to survive between elbowing, pushing and falling to the ground. musicallyhe did notgivemore than yes, butthe show put on by the canadians is undoubtedly one of the most bestial live shows we can see these days, or that was what it seemed to us when we saw the bruises on our body.
setlist: fainting spells, baptism, doe deer, courtship dating, crimewave, air war, alice practice, black panther, celestica, reckless, untrust us, empathy (with "i am made of chalk" intro)
“we are named after she-ra’s home – we play rough.”
as a statement of intent, the one belonging to toronto’s crystal castles is hard to beat. the anarchic electro-punks burst blood vessels when they first emerged in 2006, like an infant pulled out backwards from a wirey womb. their first full length veered from unhinged digital thrash to silkier, more svelte dance floor based-business of ‘crimewave’ and ‘air wars’.
since then, ethan kath and alice glass, the pair at crystal castle’s black heart, have resolutely adhered to their diy aesthetic and kept the hoods up, garnering as much acclaim as disdain for the confrontational dancefloor rage they peddle. some cite them as genius nihilist noise mongers, pummeling the corpse of new rave through the grave and into a different electronic dimension. some of us pine for their sounds to be smoothed with more melody – basically hook us up with a tune.
new single ‘doe deer’ will do nothing to unite the two sides. culled from the forthcoming second crystal castles album (again self-titled), this single, released to celebrate record store day, is more a visceral force than an actual song. full of distortion, big drums and hyperactive electronic twitching, it’s akin to the squeals of a robot in its death throes, desperately attempting to turn itself off, and it’s almost a relief when it crashes to a halt after barely two minutes of aural pounding. die-hards will be chuffed that crystal castles remain so difficult to love, others will continue to yearn for something less prickly.
