I had no idea who Crystal Castles were until the summer of 2010, when I attended the annual Reading Festival.
My buddy’s and I stumbled upon the NME stage and we were greeted with brilliance. The stage was pitch black, but the speakers were creating the light needed. Suddenly, as if from no-where, this tiny figure appeared through the smoke. She belted out an ear-piercing scream, and the entire crowd stood in awe. The next figure arose from the stage with his decks and one of the best live acts I’ve ever seen, began.
They waded us into the Crystal Castles pool with a song titled ‘Alice Practice’. It was their first song to be released, and was born when Alice Glass, the shadowy front girl, did a sound-check with the mastermind behind the tracks, Ethan Kath in 2005. It mixes house, electro and a genre not known to many, called ‘Chiptune’, which is essentially Game Boy music.
The set continued to astound us, with songs such as ‘Doe Deer’, coming in at 1 minute 38 Seconds of pure crazy house electricity. It then came to the end of the show, the whole crowd drenched in the amazing performance of Alice and Ethan. They then said their goodbyes, and played, in my view, their best ever song, ‘Baptism’. This is just a complete dance/electro track, with everything that anyone could ever want. I’d finally discovered Crystal Castles.
Fast track to November of 2012, and two albums later, and we arrive at Crystal Castles (III). The illusive 3rd album is always a difficult task, especially after two extremely successful records. Self-titled I and II were a complete works of brilliance, so when Crystal exclaimed that a 3rd album was being worked out, electro fans around went wild. Released on 8th November, it was released 4 days early due to fan demand.
Both of their early albums featured very upbeat, powerful, transient,dark unreconstructed beats and synth, along side Alice’s heavy metal style vocals. Self Titled III is very different. It seems as if Ethan has matured his musical taste to an extreme level, whilst Alice has established herself using her original vocal range. Each song on the album is a variant of Crystal’s fantastic musical compass, but with them, you can definitely distinguish the characteristics of the first two albums.
Tracks such as ‘Violent Youth’ and ‘Transgender’ feature styles taken from their second self titled, the “chilled out-ness” of the tracks is filled full of fantastic ambiance that would transport the listener to their personal Garden of Eden. We then come to tracks such as ‘Insulin’, which sees Crystal’s revert back to the gritty, dark beatnik attributes of the first Self Titled album I. ‘Insulin’ is almost as psychotic as ‘Doe Deer’, with its short, but very effective reverberated synthesizers.
Unfortunately, like many, MANY artists before them, Crystal Castles have not delivered with their 3rd album. Tracks 1-6 literally sound like one, elongated record, which, undoubtedly gets very monotonous after listening to the album. Although, the two albums before also had tracks that were indistinguishable, the tracks that did differ took myself by storm. Self Titled III did not live up to the long awaited audience’s thoughts.
To cut them some slack, trying to produce a successful 3rd album is a very long and challenging assignment, and I fully understand that they are trying to further themselves, but producing an album that pretty much sounds like the first two is not what huge Crystal fans, like myself, wanted to hear. The one positive thing about this album is that Crystal have still stuck with their genuine, original genre, style.
Hopefully, they will try again with a 4th album, although nothing has been confirmed yet, as Crystal have a very extreme touring catalogue, filling the world’s audiences with magical trance beats.
Check out a track below: