The debut album from Toronto based electronica project Crystal Castles is the culmination of over a years worth of blog hype, speculation, and brief, intoxicating glimpses into the shadowy musical landscape of 2009.
Sixteen tracks crunch and glide with minor-key pop on repeat that fit casually between hip-hop, dark disco, and horror film soundtracks. Most songs are background for a cinematic stabbing scene in the 80s projects. Others swell into anthems for a coming-of-age movie shot from the point of a radiant, urban she-monster.
Alice Glass, would be the voice of that monster. At Seattle's Showbox in November, she changed my conception of how terrifying electronic music could be live. Her ghostly make-up and Lolita figure masked the demon screaming into the microphone and diving into the churning audience of shocked hipster kids, music journalists, and soccer moms.
Hooded, leather-clad Ethan Kath, is just as imposing, in the tradition of quietly violent, post-gangster rap, music producers. Imagine Phil Specter meets Dr. Dre with a pound of acid, a gun, and a microkorg synthesizer. When he walks past me at shows I get the chill of death.
Really, I was not expecting so many tracks, at least six of which I had not been able to find in music blogs (not for lack of trying). Along with the soon to be classic "Crimewave" collaboration with LA's HEALTH, and the controversial "Alice Practice" (which may or may not have been a spontaneous improvisation), "Courtship Dating" and "Vanished" advanced the band's sound from two-step 8-bit grime to perverted pop that might have been produced by Timberland and Justin Timberlake's evil twins.