Crystal Castles

Ontario Canada's Crystal Castles released their second full length "Crystal Castles (II)" on May 25th. It's pretty great. Funny thing is that the album actually leaked in April and managed to dominate a bunch of dance charts as an mp3 without an actual release.

I really don't know quite where to place these guys (or more specifically this guy, Kath, and a girl, glass). They're not really a dance group and the hipster kids love them. I don't know I guess the hipsters must be getting angry or something, because Crystal Castles sound a lot more like Atari Teenage Riot than Animal Collective. Hey speaking of !Atari, the band isn't named after the 1983 game. The name is actually a reference to the She-ra TV show.

So getting back to the sound, I guess you'll probably have to make your own judgement on this. It's kind of dancy, but with yelling and lots of really cool production techniques and really cheesy MIDI and 8-bit synths. They are capable of pulling off some vocal treatments that would make Skinny Puppy jealous.

In the short time they've been around, this band has been surrounded by controversy. They have been sued for copyright infringement on at least 3 occasions: once for art and twice for samples. To be honest their first album probably contained more sampled music than music created by the band. That being said, their second effort is much stronger musically and feels more like an album than their first record, which came off sort of like a random collection of singles and sound collages.

Well, here are some videos. Enjoy




Off the new record here's "Not in Love"



This is "Year of Silence" which is built on samples of Sigur Ros' "Inní mér syngur vitleysingur" wonder if you can guess why I like it so much....



Last here's a track off of their first album that I happen to like quite a bit, "Vanished"