Crystal Castles - Vanished

Crystal Castles: interview

James Murphy said in early 2007: ‘In my experience, people looking for progress aren’t actually looking to move things forward, they’re looking to be perceived as a forward thinker. It’s about vanity rather than any altruistic motives for the art.’ Time Out listened and agreed. Thanks to
a widespread paranoia that alt-pop has exhausted its potential, bands that capture the mass Ritalin-grade attention in the second half of this decade are the ones who have come up with different sounds. But reducing music-making to a hunt for newness has given us a mass of groups either looking blankly back at the 1980s for some pre-fetishised synth sound or making facile combinations of different genres
(ie indie and electronica).Crystal Castles use entirely unique sounds thanks, as Ethan Fawn (the beat-making half of the band) explains, to ‘this circuit-bent Atari that I bent in a 48-hour session in 2003 or 4’. They also cross genres (albeit unintentionally) which has lead to the dubious term ‘techno-metal’ being thrown their way. But they construct good, critic-confounding music, making them the perfect artists to lead by example. Time Out caught up with them, fittingly given their distaste for celebrity, at Dalston’s Nobody Inn. The night before, they played the Purple Turtle (‘Are you making that up? They allowed it to be called the Purple Turtle? There’s more than one Purple Turtle?’), headlining the first night of this year’s Camden Crawl. They shudder at trying to imagine the usual Turtle crowd ‘Oh, like jocks?’ suggests Alice Glass, the lyrical (and sociable) half.
‘Like frat-boy rapists?’ asks Ethan quickly adding that ‘we don’t have any control over where we play, so people shouldn’t associate us with any of that.’ 

Crystal Castles - Baptism

interview with Crystal Castles

Crystal Castles

WE PREDICT A RIOT

“For its grand opening, the store had a different show booked every night for a month. Ours was one of the first few, but our fans went so mental that they started breaking things in the store – a few coffee tables, a CD rack. Then the store cancelled the rest of the shows.

BY BENJAMIN BOLES

“I was being interviewed on the BBC live on the phone, and they were like, ‘So we heard you’re third in the series of shows at Rough Trade.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, about that.…’
“I announced on the radio to all the other bands that the shows were cancelled because of us,” Kath laughs with some obvious pride.It could have been worse, though. A Crystal Castles L.A. after-party got so raucous that the police brought in a helicopter to break it up. Seriously. And that was after they played a club gig that had security working overtime.After a long hiatus, Rough Trade brought back in-store appearances, but now it only allows 40 audience members, instead of the 200 inside and 300 outside that Castle-mania unleashed.“I’m not sure why, but for that show the fans felt the need to get onstage to hold onto Alice as if she were Morrissey. One security guard kept ripping them off and throwing them back, but they just kept coming. Finally he called for backup, and there were six security guards onstage with their arms linked, and kids were still trying to get over them. One kid tried to jump over them, got his head cracked open, and as they’re dragging him off the stage to throw him out he started grabbing toward me.”
If you’ve been unaware until now of the bizarre success of this Toronto synth-punk duo, welcome to the Internet era.

Crystal Castles - Crimewave

Crystal Castles

Biography

Crystal Castles is an experimental electronic band which formed in 2003 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and consists of producer Ethan Kath and vocalist Alice Glass. They are named after the lyrics “The fate of the world is safe in Crystal Castles” and “Crystal Castles, the source of all power” both from the theme song for She-Ra’s fortress. They are known for their melancholic lo-fi sound and their explosive live shows. Their debut album was included in NME’s “Top 50 Albums of the Decade”.

Initally the band was a solo project started by Ethan Kath in December 2003. Ethan later discovered Alice Glass singing in a noise-punk band, and thought he had found the “missing ingredient” to his music. In 2004 Ethan gave Alice 60 instrumental tracks and in April 2005 she recorded vocals over five instrumentals. The band’s first single Alice Practice was actually a microphone test by Glass. She was not aware that the recording existed until London UK’s Merok Records asked to release the track on vinyl. The limited release sold out in 3 days.