 Crystal Castles (Band) Crystal Castles is an experimental electronic music[6] band from Toronto, Ontario, consisting of producer Ethan Kath and vocalist Alice Glass.[7] Crystal Castles are known for their chaotic live shows and their melancholic lo-fi home productions. The duo released many vinyl EPs between 2006 and 2007 and eponymous albums in 2008 and 2010. The band's debut album was included in the "Top 50 Greatest Albums of the Decade" by NME Magazine, at number 39.[8] 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. It is also a reference to the Atari arcade gameCrystal Castles, as the band's sound often echoes arcade game noise.[7] The band was formed in December 2003 as a solo project started by Ethan Kath. Ethan and Alice Glass met whilst "reading for the blind" as a means to serve community service punishments they had received.[9] Ethan later heard Alice singing in her noise-punk band Fetus Fatale, and thought he had found the "missing ingredient" to his music. In 2004 Ethan gave Alice 60 instrumental tracks. In April 2005 Alice Glass recorded vocals over five of these new instrumentals. 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, "Alice Practice", 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.[10] Many limited edition 7" vinyl singles followed in 2007 on various tiny labels including 2 on London's Trouble Records. 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 eponymous debut album, Crystal Castles, was also released as a double album on 12" vinyl as well as included in the "Top 50 Greatest Albums of the Decade" by NME Magazine, at number 39.[8] The band's second album, also titled Crystal Castles but known as "Crystal Castles II", was released on 24 May 2010. In April 2010 an early mix of the album leaked and without any record label promotion the leak reached #1 on various electronic music charts worldwide. The album was produced by Ethan Kath in various places, including a church in Iceland, a self-built cabin in northern Ontario, an abandoned convenience store garage in Detroit, Michigan, and two songs recorded in the London studio of Paul "Phones" Epworth.[11] To listen to Crystal Castles, according to the BBC, "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."[12] Crystal Castles musical style has been described as "ferocious, asphyxiating sheets of warped two-dimensional Gameboy glitches and bruising drum bombast that pierces your skull with their sheer shrill force, burrowing deep into the brain like a fever".[13] Crystal Castles have headlined numerous tours in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Australia. They have played many festivals including Ireland's 2009 Oxegen Festival, All Points West Festival 2009 in New Jersey, Coachella Valley and Music Festival 2009 in Indio, California, as well as the Heineken Open'er Festival 2009 in Gdynia, Poland and the Reading and Leeds Festivals in England, August 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010[14][15][16][17][18] and also headlined a Vice magazine tour across the UK in November 2007.[19] In May 2008, Crystal Castles headlined the NME New Noise tour across the UK. 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.[20] Crystal Castles toured with Nine Inch Nails in 3 dates in August 2008.[21] Crystal Castles also played various European summer festivals including England's Reading and 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.[22] They supported Blur on the first of two comeback shows in Hyde Park, London on July 2, 2009. They also performed at Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee Friday June 12, 2009. Crystal Castles also played the NME stage of Reading and Leeds Festival 2010, the Obelisk Arena of Latitude Festival 2010, Glastonbury 2010, RockNess 2010, Pohoda Festival inTrenčín, Slovakia, Exit Festival in Novi Sad, Serbia, Emmabodafestivalen in Emmaboda, Sweden, In New Music We Trust stage at the Radio 1 One Big Weekend in Bangor, North Wales May 2010 and Estrella Levante SOS 4.8 (May, 2010) in Murcia, Spain. Crystal Castles did a Full-Length UK tour in November 2010 Hard Festival 2010, which Crystal Castles are headlining, on a summer tour to; Oakland, LA State Park, Denver, Austin, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, New York, Baltimore and Finland.[23] Crystal Castles will also take part in Australia's Big Day Out 2011 festival and Bestival 2011, alongside The Cure whose vocalist Robert Smith contributed to Crystal Castles new version Of "Not In Love". They will also headline the upcoming NME Awards Tour in February 2011, with bands such as Magnetic Man, Everything Everything and Vaccines. In 2008 the band appeared in the UK Teen drama Skins where the song "Alice Practice" was used In late 2008, "Air War" was used by Toshiba in Time Sculpture, an advert for their upscaling technology. The advert features a video technique inspired by the "bullet time" filming methods popularized in The Matrix. The advert won numerous awards and was shown on television as well as in cinemas.[24] "Through the Hosiery" was featured in the sandbox video game Saints Row 2.[25] The song "Tell me What to Swallow" is a part of the soundtrack of Xavier Dolan's critically acclaimed J'ai tué ma mère. The song "Crimewave" was used in Tom Wallisch's segment of the ski movie "Turbo" 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] 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, "Insectica (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".[29][30][31][32] Samples from the song Courtship Dating were believed to be stolen by Timbaland and reused in the song Ayo Technology by 50 Cent. The intro and lead synth were created with theElektron SidStation, an 8-bit sound synthesizer. Because of this, it is remarkably similar sounding to Crystal Castles' "Courtship Dating" from their self-titled album, released the following year although performed live since December 2006. Despite the album itself not being out until nearly a year after the public debut of "Ayo Technology," there was still minor controversy over the alleged "sampling" of this song on "Ayo Technology" perhaps because of the negative reputation Timbaland has garnered recently over sampling 8-bit musicians uncredited. The origin of the unique sound of both songs has actually come into question on both sides. Crystal Castles is now notorious for its illegal use of Creative Commons-licensed chiptune music in their early, non-album works posted on MySpace.[33] It is also possible that, instead of using the SidStation personally, Timbaland and Crystal Castles both used the same sample CD, something available for purchase to use in any way without attribution, as has been hypothesized by the Timbaland blog The Thomas Crown Chronicles, which specifically cites 8 Bit Stylez by Ueberschall.[34][35] The band is planning to release a cover of Platinum Blonde's "Not in Love" featuring the vocals of Robert Smith (The Cure) on the label Fiction Records, planned for the release on the first week of December. The song is also planned to be on the upcoming Crystal Castles II album re-release as a bonus track. Additional live members: Former additional live members: |
Crystal Castles-Lovers Who Uncover Lyrics Where do all the lovers meet with one another, |
