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Crystal Castles
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| List Price: | £11.99 |
| Price: | £6.48 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Delivery on orders over £5. Details |
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Average customer review:
Track Listing
- Untrust Us
- Alice Practice
- Crimewave
- Magic Spells
- xxzxcuzx
- Air War
- Courtship Dating
- Good Time
- 1991
- Vanished
- Knights
- Love And Caring
- Through The Hosery
- Reckless
- Black Panther
- Tell Me What To Swallow
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #4232 in Music
- Released on: 2008-04-28
- Number of discs: 1
Editorial Reviews
CD Description
Taking their name from the 1980s cartoon She-Ra, Crystal Castles are Ethan Khan and Alice Glass. Known for their affiliation with bands such as Klaxons, GoodBooks and the label EdBanger this is the duo's debut album. 8-Bit synth pads, Atari effects, broken drums are all blended resulting in a noisy, melodic and bombastic burrowing of sound. Includes the singles 'Air War' and 'Alice Practice'.
Customer Reviews
Discordant electronica
I have been waiting for this album for a while since the track "Air War" was included on a Rough Trade compilation from a couple of years ago. The Toronto duo have turned out a fascinating clutch of songs which reminds one of the best of leftfield electronica of the past thirty years. There are scrappy, distorted tracks such as "Alice Practice" that evokes a saturday afternoon in an amusement arcade and then there are smooth, haunting recordings such as the six minute "Magic Spells" and the single "Crimewave". Definitely a band to take notice of.
Bouncy Castle Bohemians
Imagine this.
Imagine a time when our inveterate need to compare became less important
than sitting back in our easiest chair and listening without prejudice.
Sometimes the smallest things can be the best.
Crystal Castles defy logic and design in delivering these
sixteen extraordinarily compact little pieces to our door.
Ms Glass and Mr Kath are to be congratulated for both their vision
and economy in keeping this album tightly focussed and contained.
The buoyant rhythms are lovably naive, deceptively simple and thoroughly intriguing.
Sometimes delicate, sometimes blisteringly violent . Always interesting.
The vocal arrangements are elusive, ambiguous and strangely affecting.
Despite it's willful perversity there is, nonetheless, a finely honed pop
sensibility running all the way through the project like a golden seam.
Highlights include the joyful bouncy castle wonder that is 'Courtship Dating';
the bizarrely moving 'Knights'; the cheeky duck and bleep of 'Air War' and
the gently rolling wizardry of 'Magic Spells'.
Refreshingly uncompromising.
Highly recommended.
Good, but not quite what I was expecting!
I did enjoy this album, but I have to be honest, it wasn't quite what I was expecting! After reading other reviews and some interviews with the band (who seem VERRRY weird and subversive!) I was expecting something a lot edgier, more challenging and difficult. And while there is the occasional strange wig-out and the vocals are often quite harsh and dischordant, large parts of the album are fairly conventional melodic electronica, and really quite gentle at that, you could almost say ambient! In fact, I was sometimes reminded of Aphex Twin's 'Selected Ambient Works Volume 1', or of Boards of Canada during their more upbeat, melodic moments - especially because of their similar use of vocal samples. Not that there's anything wrong with that at all, just, as I said, not quite what I was expecting!
