Crystal Castles (band)

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Crystal Castles
Alice Glass at Popped! Music Festival 2008
Background information
Origin	Toronto, Ontario [1][2][3][4][5]
Genres	Electronic[6] Experimental[7][8] Lo-fi Noise
Years active	2004 – Present
Labels	Lies Records, Merok Records, Trouble Records, Last Gang Records, Lovepump United Records
Website	http://www.crystalcastles.com
Members
Ethan Kath Alice Glass

Crystal Castles is an experimental electronic music band from the province of Ontario consisting of producer Ethan Kath and vocalist Alice Glass.^[9] Crystal Castles are known for their chaotic live shows and their low-fi melancholic home productions. To listen to Crystal Castles "is to be cast adrift in a vortex of deafening pain without a safety net. You get the feeling you could do anything in the world, but that 'anything' would ultimately mean nothing. Crystal Castles marks a nuanced emotional territory that dance music never covered before." (BBC). ^[10]

They have also been described as "the kind of music that you just want to follow like a cult, or hate, with every fibre of your being."^[11]

The band's debut album was included in the "Top 50 Greatest Albums of the Decade" by NME Magazine, placing at number 39.

^[12]

Contents 1 History 1.1 Touring 1.2 Music usage 1.3 Copyright disputes 2 Musical style 3 Members 4 Videography 5 Discography 5.1 Studio albums 5.2 Singles and EPs 6 References 7 External links

[edit] History

Crystal Castles were named after the lines "The fate of the world is safe in Crystal Castles" and "Crystal Castles, the source of all power", both lines referring to fictional character She-Ra's fortress in the sky,^[9]. The band was formed in December 2003 as a solo project started by Ethan Kath. Ethan Kath later discovered Alice Glass singing in her noise-punk band, and thought he had found the "missing ingredient" to his music. He asked her to record vocals over his solo instrumental tracks. In April 2005, Alice Glass recorded vocals over five original instrumentals by Kath. The microphone test for this recording session was secretly recorded by the studio's engineer and was later released as the band's first single, a limited edition 7" vinyl on London's Merok Records, released in June 2006 and sold out immediately. Glass was not aware the microphone test recording existed until Merok Records asked to release it. ^[13]

Many limited edition 7" singles followed in 2007 on various tiny labels. All singles sold out immediately. Finally, in 2008, Lies Records collected most of the singles and released them on a CD for the first time, along with many previously unreleased tracks and 3 songs recorded just for the collection. This self-titled collection was also released as a double album on 12" vinyl.

The news of their second LP was announced early December 2009. The album has been produced (or is currently being produced) by Ethan Kath in various studios, including 1 song recorded in the London studio of Paul Epworth.^[14]

[edit] Touring

Crystal Castles have headlined numerous tours in USA, Europe, Japan, and Australia. The band have never toured their home country of Canada. They have played many festivals including Ireland's Oxegen Festival (2009), All Points West Festival 2009 in New Jersey USA, as well as the Heineken Open'er Festival 2009 in Gdynia, Poland and the Reading and Leeds Festivals in England, August 2007^{[15] [16][17][18][19]} and also headlined a Vice Magazine's tour across the UK in November 2007.^[20]

In May 2008, Crystal Castles headlined the NME "New Noise" tour across the UK.

On October 31, 2009 Crystal Castles performed at the world famous Monster Massive music festival in Los Angeles California

Crystal Castles performed at the Glastonbury Festival in June 2008, where the on-stage antics of Glass which included her climbing the stage rigging and constantly stage-diving, led to the organisers curtailing their set.^[21] Crystal Castles toured with Nine Inch Nails in dates across July and August 2008.^[22]

Crystal Castles also played various European summer festivals including England's Reading & Leeds Festivals. They were expected to return to the UK in September 2008 for a headlining tour but had to cancel due to recording commitments. The band also played Connect 2008 and in October they played at the Iceland Airwaves festival. Over Halloween they played another rather dramatic gig in LA that involved Alice Glass wrecking the drum kit^[23]

Their current live drummer is Christopher Robin. On August 5, 2009 at the Molson Amphitheatre, Toronto, Ontario Canada; Christopher Robin was introduced as the drummer for Crystal Castles to play alongside Danny Carey of Tool for the song "Lateralus" on Tool's 2009 mini summer tour.

They supported Britpop group Blur on the first of two comeback shows in Hyde Park, London on July 2, 2009.

[edit] Music usage

In late 2008, "Air War" was used by Toshiba in an advert for their latest range of High Definition products. The advert features freeze-frame techniques inspired by the "bullet-time" filming methods seen in the The Matrix. The advert won numerous awards, including a Guinness World Record, and was shown on television as well as in cinemas.^[24] "Through the Hosiery" was featured in the sandbox shooter video game Saints Row 2.^[25] Their song "Alice Practice" was also played on an episode of Skins.

[edit] Copyright disputes

In mid-2008, Crystal Castles were involved in two controversies related to artwork permissions and samples in their earliest unreleased songs. Pitchfork Media and the Torontoist blog published stories about Crystal Castles' use of Trevor Brown's artwork without permission. The image, depicting a black-eyed Madonna,^[26][27] was used by the band on merchandise. The issue was resolved after the band bought the rights to use the image from Brown.^[28]

Also, in one of Kath's earliest, unreleased demos, he incorporated a sample without permission; the track was released on the MySpace page of the label, Lies Records, without credit to the original sampled song.^[29] The track, "Insecticon (CC vs Lo-Bat Version)", uses clips chopped out of a song by Lo-bat called "My Little Droid Needs a Hand" (released under a Creative Commons license). Another track called "Love and Caring", samples the kick and snare from Covox's "Sunday" (less than 1 second when put together).^{[29][30][31][32]} Pitchfork published an article in defense of the band, saying that the band had never released the songs nor performed them and thus were not responsible for breaking the Creative Commons licensing on the songs.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Musical style

Crystal Castles' early music is easily recognized by Ethan Kath's clever use of short cut-up samples and Alice Glass' distorted vocals. Kath uses a modified keyboard with an Atari 5200 sound chip^[9] as an oscillator.^[33] Their musical style has been described as follows: "ferocious, asphyxiating sheets of warped two-dimensional Gameboy glitches and bruising drum bombast pierce [the] skull with sheer shrill force, burrowing deep into the brain like a fever".^[34]

[edit] Members

• Ethan Kath – Instruments and production
• Alice Glass – Vocals

Additional live lineup members:

• Christopher Robin – Drums

[edit] Videography

• Magic Spells (2008) (Directed by Videomarsh, who created the special effects of a cinder block smashing someone's skull)
• Courtship Dating (2008) (Directed by Marc Pannozzo)
• Crimewave (2008) (Fan video includes live footage and clips from the Bruce LaBruce film "Otto")
• Knights (2009) (Fan video using footage from the film "Babel")

[edit] Discography

[edit] Studio albums

• Crystal Castles (March 18, 2008) – Lies Records / Last Gang Records (UK #47)
• TBA (April 2010) ^[35]

[edit] Singles and EPs

• Alice Practice 7" EP (June 1, 2006) – Merok Records (ME002)

• Limited edition of 500 copies. Sold out in three days.

• "Crimewave" 7" (Crystal Castles vs. HEALTH) (August 13, 2007) – Trouble Records
• "Air War" 7" (December 17, 2007) – Trouble Records (TROUBLE001)
• "Courtship Dating" 7" (March 31, 2008)
• "Crimewave" 12" (Crystal Castles vs. HEALTH) (September 2008)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Crystal Castles (band)

• Crystal Castles at MySpace
• http://crystalcastles.com Official Site

v • d • e Crystal Castles Alice Glass | Ethan Kath Studio albums Crystal Castles EPs Alice Practice | Untrust Us | Magic Spells | Crystal Castles/HEALTH Singles "Crimewave" | "Air War" | "Courtship Dating/Tell Me What To Swallow" | "Courtship Dating/Trash Hologram" Related: Noise | Chiptune music