Last Gang Records
2008
Crystal Castles
About This Album
No matter how much Crystal Castles insist they're named after She-Ra's fortress and not the 1983 arcade favorite, thanks to the Atari sound chips in their keyboards, their music evokes vintage video game soundtracks -- albeit ones that have been folded, spindled, and mutilated almost past recognition. On their self-titled debut, Crystal Castles (aka Ethan Kath and Alice Glass) hurl eight-bit bleeps, bloops, and noise as relentlessly as Space Invaders marching down a screen, turning these sounds into sometimes chaotic, sometimes moody synth pop with a jagged edge. Though their low-res synths can't help but sound nostalgic (and song titles like "Air War" and "Reckless" sound like forgotten games), Crystal Castles are fresher, more complex, and much less gimmicky than might be expected, especially for those familiar with only the band's singles. Granted, those singles are still some of Crystal Castles' definitive tracks: the darkly, violently catchy "Alice Practice" pits Glass' serrated but melodic shout-singing against rippling, strafing, and strobing synth onslaughts, and "Crimewave" gives that sound a brooding groove. However, Crystal Castles go wider and deeper on the rest of the album, teetering between order and chaos, noise and melody, and energy and atmosphere in ways that are unpredictable but consistently interesting.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,4,7,8,10 and 16)

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