Music Is My Weapon

Crystal Castles is a Toronto-based band, described by Loud and Quiet as "the most exciting and original band in the world right now" [6] consisting of multi-instrumentalist Ethan Kath (of Jakarta and formerly Kill Cheerleader) and vocalist Alice Glass (of Fetus Fatale).[7] Crystal Castles are known not only for their own efforts as a band, but also for commissioned remixes for number of groups, including "Hunting for Witches" by Bloc Party, and "Atlantis to Interzone" by friends and label mates, Klaxons.

History

Crystal Castles, named after the Crystal Castle from the She-Ra franchise[9], formed in December 2003 as a project started by Ethan Kath. In April 2005, Alice Glass recorded vocals for five original instrumentals by Kath. The band's first single was recorded "accidentally": a microphone test by Glass was released through MySpace as "Alice Practice" in September 2005. Glass was not aware that it had been used until record companies heard the song and contacted the duo to offer them record deals.[10]

Since the release of "Alice Practice", the duo announced plans to release their first full-length album on Last Gang Records, which was released in North America on 18 March 2008 and released in the UK on 28 April 2008.[11]

Crystal Castles have toured Europe and the USA numerous times since 2006, including a US tour with Australian, electronic group, The Presets in February 2007.[12][13][14] The band also played at the Reading and Leeds Festivals in England, August 2007[15] and were set to play the CMJ Festival October 2007.[16][17][18][19] They supported Metric on certain dates throughout their North American tour in September and October 2007[20][21][22] and also headlined Vice Magazine's UK tour in November 2007 called Unitaur, which also featured These New Puritans and The Teenagers.[23]

Crystal Castles were also featured in the Channel 4 British Drama Skins (Series 2 Episode 3) performing as themselves playing "Alice Practice".

In mid-2008, Crystal Castles became focal in several plagiarism disputes. Pitchfork Media and The Torontoist published stories about Crystal Castles' use of Trevor Brown's artwork without permission. The image, depicting a black-eyed Madonna,[24][8] was used by the band on merchandise, after being found on an "old flyer, without credit", with the hope "that the artist might reveal themselves and make contact".[8] The band were also alleged to have plagiarised several songs from the demoscene community, including "Insecticon", which shares similarity with a song by Lo-bat called, "My Little Droid Needs a Hand", and were accused of "stealing the beat" from Covox's "Sunday", in the song "Love and Caring".

Musical style

Crystal Castles' music is easily recognized by their heavy use of samples and distorted female vocals. Crystal Castles claims to use a modified keyboard that uses an Atari 5200 sound chip [7] as an oscillator. Their musical style has been described as having "ferocious, asphyxiating sheets of warped two-dimensional Gameboy glitches and bruising drum bombast pierce [the] skull with sheer shrill force, burrowing deep into the brain like a fever".[29] Indie music review website, Pitchfork, gave a positive review of Crystal Castles' remix of "Leni" by GoodBooks, and described the style as "pitch-shifted vocal snippets [that] ricochet like pinballs around Crystal Castles' patented 8-bit synths".[30]