Crystal Castles: Crystal Castles

During our commute to work this morning, Shannon and I had a hard time figuring out what to listen to. We tried to listen to My Bloody Valentine, because I've been meaning to for awhile and just finally found the cd, but I am very particular sometimes about my music matching my mood, or the weather, or the time of day, and MBV just wasn't doing it for me this morning, in the rain. I wanted to be listening to it on a bright and sunny afternoon instead, but as there wasn't really any way to make that happen immediately, we had to settle for finding something else. Shannon asked what I had new, but it seems like most of what I've been listening to lately is either shoegazery or Swedish, and Shannon was hoping for something with a beat. Only after he got out of the car did I think of Crystal Castles, which I think he will love (because, you know, their stuff sounds like video games).

Crystal Castles is a Canadian electro-punk-dance-noise duo (Ethan Kath and Alice Glass), named for the home of none other than She-Ra, Princess of Power. Apparently there's been quite a bit of controversy surrounding them involving sampling, Creative Commons license and some leaked tracks; you can read more about that here if you're interested. I can't quite remember how I happened across them; iTunes or iLike or something of the sort recommended them to me at some point, and so I gave them a listen. At first, I did not really like them at all, but I gave them another chance and actually quite enjoy them now. I think they go a bit overboard with the Atari-like effects on some songs, but for the most part, it's a really fun album. Or a really interesting album at the very least.

Here's the video for their song Courtship Dating:



Not the most compelling of videos, but it'll give you a taste of their sound, though this one is much less "video-game-y" than most of their stuff. You can listen to and/or download their song "Air War" here.