CRYSTAL CASTLES PLAGUE

I was going to hold back on posting this, but I was just told by someone that they heard it on the radio. As the YES/NO blurb reads, it's all about new stuff. Gotta drop it like it's hot yo.

And this is as hot as a witch holding hot iron rods burning at the stake, I have to say. That is: hot and scary.

Crystal Castles have gone from strength to strength. Starting off with their self-titled debut, the duo - Ethan Kath and Alice Glass - began with near-industrial, electronic noise music. This is essentially electro with a DIY/punk aesthetic. It was all very dystopian, all very like broken robots in a grotty 8-bit club playing chiptune rave music. It was different, brutal, energetic. Key tracks for this sound were the devastating 'Alice Practice', the mental 'XXZXCUZX Me', and the painfully good 'Courtship Dating', a reworking of a HEALTH song.

But beginning with their second self-titled album (referred to as Crystal Castles II), they began to veer towards the dark side. People call it drone, witch house, goth trance, blah blah blah. It is what it is and it's dark and electronic, moody and trance-like. Ethan Kath seemed to have ditched his modified synthesiser (he stuck a chip from an Atari soundboard in there to get those bubbly bleeps you hear on their first album) in favour of a certain, piercing Dracula-organ-cum-heavy-trance sound.

And, really, it's no different with their latest: 'Plague'.



In fact, it is a bit different. It's actually more eerily gothic than before. Beginning with a heady bit of drone that wouldn't sound out of place in the basically unlistenable Mater Suspiria Vision's repertoire. However, this soon turns into a distortion-laden slice of energy, complete with Alice's trademark yelps and screams in the background. The quieter parts of this song have seen Alice also sing melodically, something I've never heard before. It's a nice change and a different dynamic - something the duo can use to sculpt very different songs this time around.

The beat is great: though the kick is crazy, the snare is slow and leaves the rhythm hanging in the air, swaying to and fro above the breathy synth work of Ethan. There is some amount of noise and industrialism in here, as with their first album, with the section towards the end of the song including what sounds like a sample of an angle grinder or something as equally sickening yet satisfying to hear.

This song makes you clench your teeth and fit on the floor like you just don't care. Gone is the mashed potato, the twist, even Soulja Boy's Superman dance. This marks the rise of the epileptic. It's all I can imagine when I listen. Kind of like a cross between moshing and rigor mortis.

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• More Crystal Castles music on their SoundCloud
• Crystal Castles on Facebook
• Crystal Castles official site
• Here's the Wikipedia page for Crystal Castles
• Crystal Castles Youtube channel
• Crystal Castles... Myspace
• Follow Crystal Castles on Twitter
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HEALTH TEARS MAX PAYNE 3 SOUNDTRACK

My God. My sweet Jesus. I'm not religious, but I almost became so after I confirmed my suspicions: the song on the Max Payne 3 advert IS by HEALTH!

I love HEALTH, I have loved HEALTH for a long time. They're an interesting band. Their earlier stuff is characterised by brutally vigorous drums, crunching, alien-sounding distorted guitars and screeching electronics, topped with faint vocals that float ghostly above all the chaos. It was also characterised by a flagrant, revelling disregard for time signature or normal track dynamics.

Both of their albums, the self-titled HEALTH and their somewhat milder second outing, Get Color, have been turned into remix albums (HEALTH DISCO and HEALTH DISCO 2). This is a clever move as it gets some very good names, Salem and Crystal Castles to name just two, involved in the process of getting HEALTH's name to the masses. This next move is even cleverer.

HEALTH have created hundreds of hours of their gritty, no-frills, balls-out electro/noise/rock for Rockstar's new Max Payne 3. Probably comes as a surprise to many, not least to me, but it's a very smart move: both by Rockstar and HEALTH. It's a benefit for the two. The videogame gets some amazing music; HEALTH gets recognition they'd probably never have imagined. Listen below, if you haven't heard it already.

And if you have heard it already, you know you'll want to listen again.



'Tears' - what a song. It towers above you, distorting and relentless, insanely repetitive but addictively so. Their scratchy bleeps are sheer gems of production, turning what was just a strange Noise band into a fully-fledged, albeit underground (but for how long?), electro-rock band. A lot like HEALTH DISCO 2 track (not a remix), 'USA Boys'.

The crazed drums have gone, but remain strong. They are the heart of the track, played with a thunderous force and augmented electronically so that everything fits nicely, but jumps out at you at the same time. That's not to forget what gave it away for me in the beginning: the vocals. The phantomlike, nearly monotone, slightly altered, quiet and unassuming vocals - these wind in and out of the stamping sounds calmly, with all the minimalist, meditative philosophy of a Zen koan.

I cannot get enough of this song. I want the soundtrack.

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• HEALTH on Twitter
• HEALTH on Myspace
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