This inspired the two to start a project that made noise music, but instead of guitars, they would use electronic sounds made with a circuit-bent Atari 5200, which led multiple journalists to describe their genre of music as a chiptune style they did not intend it to be categorized as.Ĭrystal Castles is a compilation of sold-out singles that made the duo famous internationally, as well as unreleased demos recorded in 2004 and three new cuts produced for the album: "Untrust Us, " Courtship Dating," and "Tell Me What to Swallow." The content on the LP includes samples of tracks from acts such as Death from Above 1979, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Luciano Berio, Drinking Electricity, and Van She. The two met each other in 2004 and both had an interest in noise music acts like AIDS Wolf & The Sick Lipstick. That you can talk about social issues through "party music." That you can be earnest and fierce at the same damn time. And that you can do it all with swagger.Crystal Castles is the debut studio album by Canadian electronic music duo Crystal Castles at the time of its release, the group consisted of producer Ethan Kath and singer Alice Glass. That songs with chopped up, distorted or incomprehensible vocals can blast more emotion than even the most eloquent lyrics. Most of all, Crystal Castles taught me that music that makes you dance can also make you think. Actually, what she said was, "Fucking Katy Perry spraying people with her fucking dick, her fucking cum gun coming on fucking children." But the greatest Glass quote is also the most direct: "I hate homophobic, racist, misogynist dickweeds." ![]() While other women might try to mince their words for the sake of good PR, Glass would just straight up say, "we need an army because the mainstream hates women." In interviews, she would fret over abortion clinics getting shut down, or blast Katy Perry for her oversexualized image. It was taken at an anti-government protest in Yemen.Īlice Glass was one of the first feminist musicians I looked up to for her no-bullshit attitude towards misogyny. The album for their third (and last) album, III, is a striking picture of a woman in a burka, craddling her wounded son in a way that distinctly recalls the Virgin Mary and Jesus in Michelangelo's Pietà sculpture. Instead, her bleak lyrics railed against social injustices with the vigor of a punk poet, and neither of them were ever afraid to be political. ![]() They even called themselves "an axe in the face of emo." In fact, Glass probably would've kicked you if you called her a #sadgirl. Despite Kath's shaggy black hair and Glass' eyeliner-smudged raccoon eyes, they weren't play-acting at being goths for the sake of cool pictures. If you listen carefully, you can hear her say "Hi!" as the song starts up.Ĭrystal Castles also taught me that music at the dark, gritty end of the spectrum can rise above pure nihilism and meaningless melancholy. As the story goes, Glass and Kath were recording songs in in a local Toronto studio in 2004, and one of the studio's techies secretly recorded Glass' mic test. In fact, their first single, "Alice Practice," was actually kind of a mistake. But the announcement signaled a definitive end to their decade-long collaboration-and to me, the end of an era.Ĭrystal Castles taught me that the best music doesn't have to sound shiny and polished. Instead, they've both been performing DJ sets separately-Glass recently appeared alongside Jupiter Keyes of Health, Mike Simonetti and Prince Terrence at a party in New York City, while Kath DJed at Atlantic's Imagine Festival in August. I was bummed, but not exactly surprised the duo hadn't played a show together in almost a year, and there hadn't been an announcement about their next release since their last album in 2012. Who knows what really transpired between Glass and Kath, the producer who she met when she was just fifteen years old. Glass' third tweet was the most enigmatic:įor a multitude of reasons both professional and personal I no longer feel that this is possible within CC.Īlthough this is the end of the band, I hope my fans will embrace me as a solo artist in the same way they have embraced Crystal Castles. My art and my self-expression in any form has always been an attempt towards sincerity, honesty, and empathy for others. The second one was a statement that few could argue with: Her first tweet cut straight to the chase: ![]() This week, after ten years of making some of our generation's most hauntingly beautiful music at brain-splitting volumes, Glass announced on (where else?) Twitter that the duo is dunzo.
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