Out of nowhere comes a band from Toronto with a song that fuses hardcore singing and chiptune synths. A couple of sell-out singles and a lot of gigs later they're causing riots across the USA and the UK. This band is Crystal Castles, and that song was Alice Practice. Their journey seems amazing, but what is most remarkable is how quickly alice practice became famous. Anyone who hasn't heard it should immediately go to their myspace page, because it is the most unlikely candidate for a hit debut song. The idea alone of fusing experimental 8-bit electronica and vocals ala digital hardcore is insane. It gets worse. This is far from Enter Shikari: Alice Glass practically screeching into her mic-distort setup, with Ethan Kahn delivering what can only be described as waves of chiptune samples remminiscent of atari consoles (a certain Atari 5200 in fact) assaults the listener. It's loud, it's somewhat crude, but it works brilliantly. It travels the four corners of Myspace before a record label begins making offers of a single. And here is the cherry on the cake: as the name suggests, that was only a practice!
Now Crystal Castles have released their self-titled debut album. suprisingly via mainstream distributors. It seems their motive is to supply their fans with something to buy, seeing as their singles are absolutely impossible ot find on the internet, let alone in the shops. The album contains both their early chipcore songs and their later, smoother synthey (can I say Orbit-ey?) electronica pieces. First on my list is the famous Alice Practice, mentioned above. XXZXCUZX ME gives us a more extreme version of this, almost hardcore with guitars swapped for samplers and drums replaced with a TB-303. Moving on: Love and Caring is the nicest of the chipcore songs. A heavy "donkey kong" drum opening, which defines the entire song, leads to a beautifuly 8-bit counterpoint to Alice's distorted vocals. The chorus is made up of seriously destroyed samples. And who can deny that CC only releases first takes after hearing Alice say "What the **** is this?? Oh it's the bass!!"?
Through The Hosiery starts with a strange noise, similar to Tool's Useless Idiot or the end of Radiohead's Karma Police. This moves swiftly onto some well-planned synth-work and Alice's far-away voice. Subdued and disturbing, but perfect. Black Panther follows the same perterbing thread with a song about a teenage mother throwing her newborns off a cliff and ending with the
chilling "If this is love, then I'm ****ing proud of it!". A very upbeat song, the closest CC have got to dance, yet so brilliant I'd rather call it "electronic minimalism". ;-)
Two covers are included. The first is Crimewave by Health, and personally I prefer this to the original - they even added some of the heavy drum mayham from the original. Next is Vanished, a cover of Van She's Sex City with chopped vocals and slightly altered lyrics. I haven't heard the original, but the CC version is calm, smoothing and a bit dark with subtle changes throughout. I love it. You need the lyrics in front of you though...
Reckless and Knights are demonstrations of Ethan's synth playing, the former a lot better than the other. Magic Spells is similar. Air Wars is one of the few CC songs to actually change tune halfway through. Its bizarre vocals passed through some sort of a delay actually work quite well.
Courtship Dating marks the transition between the chipcore and synth stage in CC: chiptune, samples, it's all in there, but it's smoother and more measured. Untrust Us has more weird vocal effects, but has a lot of the smooth synthwork of Magic Spells, and the two sorta complement themselves.
Last on my list, and a brilliant end to the album, is the creepy Tell Me What To Swallow. You really can't say much about it: acoustic Crystal Castles.
If Crystal Castles is anything to judge the Experimental Electronica scene by, there are a lot of suprises in store for us over the next few years, and they're all good. If you're looking for something different, get this CD.
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