Crystal Castles

people who give a shit about whether something is old news are so 1997

I just remembered that I preordered this. Still not out, I guess. The Liars remix posted on Pitchfork today is pretty excellent.

they were total dicks to everybody when they came through town but I loved their show anyway

still, their manners were fucking appalling

there are probably some people who still think that means they might be Proper Pop Stars I guess though

Fuck is this?

Dunno. Heard a couple tracks a year or so ago. Longer, I think. Fall of '06? Lo-fi 8-bit party noise w/ screaming? Just listened to a bunch of more recent stuff. Very, very bad.

love these guys. makes me want to get the old NES up and working and attempt to beat megaman 2

They're an acquired taste (especially the screaming), but their remix of Klaxons - "Atlantis to Interzone" is great.

'Knights' is good, well the 'chorus' is phenomenal altho the whiny synth noise elsewhere does grate.

'air war', people

there's a comp of their remixes going around that's good

remixes by them(him?) weirdly tend to be better than their original material. i guess it fits with their approach that they would put more effort into taking bloc party's money than putting out their own shit, though.

rmx of goodbooks' "leni" is A+

this has crazy grown on me

God, there are few bands I hate more than them, but this is probably a condition of living in the same city as them.

I went ahead and preordered the Magic Spells 12", even though it didn't say when it was actually coming out.

I should probably check and see if I ever got charged for this. I Paypal'd it.

Basically the new rave Test Icicles, right?

More like the "Donkey Kong" Test Icicles. I was over all this 8-bit punk/chip music in about 30 seconds.

:/

Ow they make my ears go hurty.

i'm being asked to give up my radio show this week so that they can broadcast their concert.

REJECTED

i love my lame city friends big upping this band

lame-city

i like that health track they did.

r u a bolg?

wham city

fuck that... TEN CITY

parts of this sound like the lost moby/alec empire tape. (which most people would mean as an insult but i don't.) "courtship dating" is pretty good.

Saw them live a few weeks ago and they weren't convincing, but I like the album.

Okay I fold, the album is really great. I'm trying to work out why something this cheap and shoddy and trashy is this affecting, and I can only put it down to that sense of sadness running through everything. It's like dying in Zelda over and over again.

Laughed at the Zelda thing, but you're right - a lot of it is really sad sounding. Haunting and sad.

I'm actually a little disappointing because I was all fired up to give this a real kicking. Even the ones with the screaming work, I can totally see why they used Alice Practice in that grieving scene in Skins now.

DisappointED, even. Although I am a little disappointing as well.

man fuck this band
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2008/05/05/chiptune-music-theft-continues-crystal-castles-abuses-creative-commons-license/

wau

still ike the album, tho

are they actually going to get in any trouble for this?

Likely, eight fewer people will buy the album, thus cutting their sales in half.

(I downloaded the album on SLSK. Take that, hypocrisy!)

the also apparently stole this dudes art http://www.pileup.com/babyart/blog/?p=81

they sound like really awesome people

first line of a review i wrote a few months ago: "Crystal Castles are easier to like when you don’t know much about them."

they do sound like dicks, probably, but in that creative commons article i couldn't get past the phrase "some in the hard-core chiptune community."

the album's still one of my favorites of the year.

DisappointED, even. Although I am a little disappointing as well.

http://fonejacker.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/provindings.gif

I'm still on the fence about these guys. When I heard that track on Skins, while I thought it fit really well with the scene, I thought it was kind of rubbish. Then I downloaded the album anyway and changed my mind - I thought Alice Practice was great. Right now though, that's the only one I can really dig.

I think what annoys me is they sound like the Knife (which shouldn't be a bad thing) but with loads of Amiga chip sounds all over it (which neither should be a bad thing) - I guess I just overloaded on the Knife in 2006 and I'm not really in the mood for hearing them again.

Likely, eight fewer people will buy the album, thus cutting their sales in half.

That's still eight people too many buying the album.

i listened to about 30 seconds of their myspace and could not stand the vocals. the rest is gameboy camera 2002. why the fuck is this band popular is it just that the singer has a vagina and is almost cute?

I'm really into this now too.

case in point

are they actually popular? i can't even tell. i like it because i guess i like kinda moody synth music with hooky vocal loops and occasional squelchy noise.

(however as the last remaining person to admit liking the first fischerspooner album i am not to be trusted.)

They're popular in the way that Justice are popular I think, you can't quite dismiss them as an internet fad, there's definitely a groundswell of something going on here, but it won't actually translate into selling many records.

The first people I know locally to go on & on about Crystal Castles were big Klaxons fans. The flyers for their nu-rave clubnight used Extreme Animals artwork without attributing it at all, heh.

i did not watch skins. but still a 'rule of' 3 purchase for me. i'm not sold on it, but a couple of tracks mean i will re-listen.

(but i did catch them actually being on skins, now i mention it!)

however as the last remaining person to admit liking the first fischerspooner album i am not to be trusted.)

-- tipsy mothra, Saturday, May 10, 2008 3:05 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark

i will admit to listening to a lot of 8-bit and gameboy music at the beginning of the decade but this crystal castles shit still sucks

These guys just aren't very good at dance music, sorry.

I kinda like some of the music. Don't love it or anything, but the noiser/screamy stuff is okay. After reading about the Trevor Brown business, though, just fuck them.

i will admit to listening to a lot of 8-bit and gameboy music at the beginning of the decade but this crystal castles shit still sucks

what are some 8-bit and gameboy groups??

God, why do chiptunes even exist. I see absolutely no redeeming value or merit of any kind in it. Even still, I can tolerate it, but Crystal Castles, hell no.

nostalgia maybe? it's the only music that makes me want to cry.

is it just that the singer has a vagina and is almost cute?

Charming! Real nice.

the vagina or the singer?

eyes lit
I want short breasts
I adore my boobs
nice breasts
in the summer
in to rub hands

always & forever

There's a Myspace site aggregating the various instances of alleged theft:

http://www.myspace.com/crystaltheft

lol timbaland listens to these dudes

what is the delayed English kids chatter in 'Air War' from?

It's Alice reading from Ulysses in a funny voice.

Alice is hawt amirite?

yep, n hxc

nope. they both look rubbish:

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/2395824/Crystal+Castles+teaser_291.jpg

http://www.greencine.com/images/static/moonraker_jaws.jpg

id still drop a load off in her

id crystallize her castle

that one was also sexual

wish she'd bit my 8

she kind a reminds me of karen o in the 'inexplicably lusted after indie chick' stakes.

hey, you're on the internet talking about famous people you wouldnt have sex with

sadtrombone.wav

http://idolator.com/5245692/crystal-castles-still-brawlin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMmkHf4qE9Q

Crystal Castles at Sonar. Apparently they blew their speakers while performing which made Alice berserk. She punches a security guard and starts tearing apart the drum set. The kick drum lands on the sound engineers legs as he tries to stop Alice from doing more stupid shit. At the end of the video it seems kath goes running into a fight with the sound engineer but it cuts off. Anyone was there to explain what happened?

duh hadn't clicked xpost above mine :P

Good things come to people who have no patience: After today's leak, Crystal Castles have bumped up the release of their second album (also self-titled) to tomorrow.

Gotta say, I'm a little disappointed that they've apparently decided they're too cool for videogame sound effects. That they blatantly ripped off the chiptune scene that they claimed to have no idea existed. But that's sorta besides the point when their songs were so fucking great.

http://www.american.com/archive/2010/february/soul-music

I stopped listening to them because of their ongoing assholishness - we're all assholes some or a lot of the time but these guys take it too goddamn far, there's enough other good music that I'll be fine if I miss out on a good CC jam because of my reactionary stance

I don't miss the video-game sounds at all; there's so much else going on with their sound that they don't need to fall back on that gimmick.

I stopped listening to them because of their ongoing assholishness - we're all assholes some or a lot of the time but these guys take it too goddamn far, there's enough other good music that I'll be fine if I miss out on a good CC jam because of my reactionary stance

I understand the sentiment, because I hear it all the time from friends who refuse to listen to Kanye West, but those people are missing out on fantastic music.

yeah if there was a fantastic music shortage & CC wasn't being dicks to people I know personally to be stand-up dudes, it might be one thing - but really, "missing out on fantastic music" just makes room for more fantastic music, so fuck listening to these assholes no matter how good their records are imo

like, the bigger issue here is: they work within a subculture. kanye west being a loose cannon, who cares, all the people he's actively making trouble for are also multi-millionaires. crystal castles relies on a community made up largely of people who work long hours for low pay to make it possible for touring bands to get paid for their work, and they routinely screw over the members of that community. the only possible recourse against such assholism, within the community, is to deny them the attention & money that enables them to continue. (I suppose one could also try to engage them and persuade them that fucking people over is wrong. Good luck.) missing out on their good music seems a small price to pay if in the exchange one increases the likelihood of such dickheads being driven from the community.

you could also download their album illegally and burn 50 copies and give them away to anyone you know who likes them before the album is released

but maybe i'm an asshole too idk

I agreed with that stance totally until I read http://www.pileup.com/babyart/blog/?p=201. It seems like dude was perfectly okay with their idea theft after they threw some $ his way. Dolla, dolla billz y'all.

deny them the attention & money that enables them to continue

Or just download their stuff for free, enjoy it, and stay away from them in a live setting. You've got about a 30% of them not showing up or Alice throwing an onstage temper tantrum and canceling the show anyway, so it works out for the best, really.

I think listening to it is still support - gotta hit 'em where it actually hurts by not listening. downloading & listening = "it doesn't matter how we treat people, you're still going to listen to our music"

(and also by not responding to attention-seeking behaviors obv. but too late on that call lol)

I know this ends up in an all-musicians-are-dicks-anyway classic argt btw so we ain't gotta really get into it, I just think in this case where the subculture within which they function actually has a choice about whether cc's behavior has consequences or not, everybody should opt for actually making a difference & not giving them coverage/bookings/etc

Why can't everyone be more like Andrew W.K.

...helping children blow things up?

He also helps them have fun and be safe while doing it!

the hired actor or the real andrew wk? http://walrusmusicblog.com/blog/the-andrew-w-k-from-the-i-get-wet-album-was-a-hired-actor/

Nooooo let's not go down that rabbit hole on this thread.

Really like most of this album, although I skip some tracks which are just too abrasive for too long (/too old).

yes, I'm feeling this one for the moment. Can't wait to listen to it in a car

i like this a lot too

some of the softer songs are, weirdly, pretty reminiscent of Mylene Farmer (esp. the single).

they're on a more manic thing than gang gang dance, but that's who they make me think of these days. sort of a post-everything dance band.

Actually really looking forward to following this band in the future. I just wish Alice would differentiate herself from Karen O a little more.

I got worked up for a moment, then I realized its Crystal Stilts I'm partial to. Oh well...

sampling Sigur Ros like this is nagl imo

Castles fans should listen to some DAT Politics.

still on my first listen, but i'm enjoying this! unsurprising, though, b/c i really liked their last record

wasn't even planning on buying it or listening to it, but randomly picked it up when i saw it in the "new" section of my local record store earlier. glad i did!

HOLY SHIT is "Not In Love" gorgeous

like, ridiculously so

I really wish they'd tone down the massive self-conscious hipster bullshit thing they've got going because some of their music is really quite affecting. I like the last track that sounds like they're wrenching animal noises out of their equipment.

I'm really loving this album. I haven't heard anything off their first record save "courtship dating" so I don't really understand the connections to 8-bit or that scene because I'm not getting it so much off this one. The music sounds more like A Sunny Day in Glasgow than anything else.

xpost animals drowning. It works in their favor that they've used these noisier moments sparingly. The harsh vs comforting sound of this album is really satisfying.

nick from diamonds is reporting that these dudes died of PCP overdose.

wait - both of them?

hm.... he's also posting that the New Pornographers all died in a fiery bus crash. I think he's fantasizing out loud.

Yeah, pretty hilarious.

These sorts of 'jokes' = dud

maybe the New Pornographers did die and Crystal Castles were just trying to blatantly rip them off?

RIP

hope you're being a pair of unpleasant turds in heaven

Er, wow. Saw them in Nottingham last night, really wasn't expecting much - but that was the best gig I've seen this year. (Well, I say "seen" - the band were barely visible behind the smoke and strobes). The music scales up brilliantly, tracks like Crimewave and Baptism turning into thunderous juggernauts.

i'd like to see them based on what you say. LP favourites are 'Empathy' and 'I Am Made Of Chalk'.

This is awesome.

loving this

Okay, when did this band decide to actually go from bad to great?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32udqal_lyQ

I've avoided the second album until now because I just assumed it was more of the first.

This sounds good with Robert Smith. I can finally make sense of the lyrics. I wasn't that off I think:

NOT IN LOVE

I found your picture
in the back of my door.
Wont keep you at home, no one lives here anymore.
and now it burns
now we can't be friends
nothing here should end
Here we go again. Bwa bwa bwa.
Cause it's cold outside, when you coming home?
cause it's hot inside, we could lay in the park.

I'm not in love

Could it be that time has taken it's toll
won't take you so far, I am in control
and now it burns
now we can't be friends
nothing here should end
Here we go again. Bwa bwa bwa.
Cause it's cold outside, when you coming home?
cause it's hot inside, we could lay in the park.

I'm not in love
We are not in love

― Moka

transcribe crystal castles lyrics

The new album is fantastic.

I like the first album but then again I also like Atari Teenage Riot and Severed Heads

Why does no-one mention 'Celestica' on this thread?!? Top ten for me this year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JITI0FskSG0

Holy shit this song with Robert Smith is amazing.

yeah 1st album was OK but the new one is pretty great

also when did these guys start writing way better Cure lyrics than RS has come up with in the last decade?

Damn, never realised that was actually a cover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1_PM5nLZeI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

HOLY SHIT is "Not In Love" gorgeous

― ksh, Tuesday, May 25, 2010 11:39 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

like, ridiculously so

― ksh, Tuesday, May 25, 2010 11:39 AM (5 months ago)

wow the original is pretty amazing. that band was wearing the wrong clothes.

Why does no-one mention 'Celestica' on this thread?!?

My favourite track on the second album, and one of the highlights of last week's gig. (Tears in my eyes, ahem.)

I was wondering why these people were trending on Twitter and it makes much more sense now.

been playing this on repeat since yesterday

Wow it's so strange to hear Robert Smith sing a Platinum Blonde song! When I was a child The Cure was my favorite band and Platinum Blonde was the biggest band in Canada. Too bad they never hit outside of the country. BTW they had that look 5 years before Poison came out.
This is imo their best song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4SOnBDe7qs

Haha, I got that Platinum Blonde album when I was a kid from one of those grab bag things where you get 10 mystery LPs in a brown paper bag for like a buck or something. I think I listened to it quite a bit at the time. Judging from that video, I'd say they haven't really stood the test of time.

finally they live up to their thread title

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTBccJpTjs0

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

HOLY SHIT is "Not In Love" gorgeous

― ksh, Tuesday, May 25, 2010 11:39 AM (5 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

like, ridiculously so

― ksh, Tuesday, May 25, 2010 11:39 AM (5 months ago)

― (crüt) (markers) (crüt) (markers) (crüt) (markers), Tuesday, October 26, 2010 6:20 PM (1 month ago)

So much better with Robert Smith on the vocal.

wow I am very late to this party, "violent dreams" (with the stina nordenstam samples) is amazing.

assholes or not, their new album is seriously gorgeous and danceable. although it's not a great car album, had me in a trance while I should have been watching the road, had to turn it off!

It's awesome, and way better than that piss-poor Kanye album that's one all the awards.

But I find it odd yet predictable that the band REALLY caught on with the high-school crowd. My 14 year old sister adores the band, as do all her friends, and when they recently played here in Boulder (well I'm in Denver, but anwyay:) for NYE apparently the # of 17 year old girls was abhorring, according to friends who go to school up there. I guess they've got that perfect blend of great hooks and obvious attitude/image that the under 20 crowd really latches onto.

way to bring up kanye in a thread that has nothing t odo with him!

haha imo it was just such, such, such a better contender for album of the year. i didn't listen to an awful lot from 2010 but it rly struck me as the single-handed most solid album of the year entire... there's not one song that lacks any less luster than the one preceding or post.

When I saw them live at Nottingham Rock City last autumn, almost the entire audience was under 21. And sober. And ecstatic. Which made for a fantastic atmosphere.

new album is kinda ehhhh on first listen

all the sharp poke-y edges have been filed down and even when they try for abrasive (like "insulin") it just lacks bite. maybe it's the mixing/mastering this time around? either way, the songs don't seem to be there either.

I hate terms like this, but this is a grower. I still think (II) trumps their current discography - mostly due to the almost magical amount of variety in song atmospheres and structures - but if anything, I adore the focus of this album. It feels more like a narrative than anything that has preceded, with a lot of likening to Burial's work: The songs saturate in this ambiguous but very real universe of suffering/doom/gloom, in which Alice's vocals - incessantly obscured and yet audibly echoed, as if shouting from that iconic well in Silence of the Lambs - come across as a child's unheard cries. She's a woman, sure, but it's her resolve to stay in this range of unmatured innocence (with the sultriness of age evidenced in past albums, especially in certain bits of "Celestica") with her tone of voice that creates a completely unsexualized version of herself.... case in point, a child. Lyrical themes and especially the title of the last song provide this as well.

I like this album. I don't think it does a lot to really progress the band's sound - and if the next album were to attempt as little progression as this one did, I may lose some respect for the group - but what I appreciate is this cohesiveness, this assuredness in wants and confidence in what they're able to convey. I know this sounds kinda masturabatory, but I really see the future of this band existing in concept albums, singular concepts that are done with immeasurable success.

They're really going to have to surprise me with the next release, though, as I think happy pop they've covered with the first album. They can't possibly get any gloomier than this without losing that inherent danceability that makes them so charming. I really don't know what next they're going to tackle, and considering that I also consider this album to be something of a sort of Amnesiac to (II)'s Kid A, they might suffer naturally through a Hail to the Thief stage in which they attempt to reinvigorate their sound while not particularly providing evidence that this reinvigoration was something needed in the first place, or that which is being built upon was a more matured, confident version of it's current self.

One more thing: A lot of reviews of their first album likened them to the Knife, save for that Glass's vocals did something to humanize their whole atmosphere. The next album made a considerable effort to make Glass as much as an instrument - a loop, a sample - than a human. It's this album that I really think has entirely coalesced any differention between human and electronic. I'm not sure if these are themes they're going for, but it's exciting to me to see this gradual loss of humanity with every consecutive album. Maybe that's their next step? To place both band members in a big black box, with sound emitting from both but little physical differentiation between the two.

I also saw them live some weeks back. The show was OK, and it was really fun seeing the guys, but I can't remember half the night and not sure if it was any different from the first ten minutes. Khan was resolute in playing his instruments, gazing into seemingly nothing, and Glass crowd-surfed a bit but was otherwise a figurine.

Kelpolaris--way off the mark about their live show. The blinding glare of their (totally amazing) light show, for one, either rendered you sightless for a hot second or enhanced your high or something. Alie was way more than a figurine both times I've seen her. Also crowdsurfing despite inevitable gropage is pretty rad. The new album sounds totally boring to me. Unless my headphones sucked and I'm missing a lot of texture or something it sounded like a lot was missing from the tracks. Lack of play or imagination. I definitely prefer them live. Super fun.

*Alice

III has definitely clicked for me, and i quite like it. not as much as either I or II (especially not as much as II) but i like it.

My light show consisted of red, blue and white lights. They had the cover-art as a backdrop but otherwise it was a surprisingly boring concert. There was one particularly hilarious girl, though, who could perform the same dance move in anything over 30-second intervals.

OK, so I don't know if she did this at your (fellas) shows, but there was a particularly cool instance in which Alice was held up by the crowd while on her *knees*. As in, her body was upright and continuing to sing but the crowd held onto her bent legs in order to sustain such. Khan, I think his name is, was just very meditative and I thought the fact that he placed his synth on boxes of carrying equipment an odd but sorta interesting choice.

Otherwise, Glass just had one leg propped up on a speaker and shouted directly at the crowd. For a little too long. I've seen live shows and she did considerably less jumping around and all such I've seen in YouTube clips. They've stopped an incredibly number of times in Denver/Boulder, so maybe the thrill of novelty was wearing on them.

Fascination ends

That cover with Mr. Smith is currently wrapping up three years of my life on just the necessary note, so.

heard "affection" today in the brooks brothers store in downtown princeton

A month late but their set opening for Depeche in LA was great because they did NOT give a fuck. Or rather they did, by being exactly themselves and if the crowd didn't like it, fuck 'em. Great times.

Not in Love (album version) is one of the best songs ever recorded. Didn't love their most recent release -- it felt familiar, gratuitous almost -- but this band is a classic band.

Fun fact: Once i was in brooks brothers shopping for ties and they were playing Celestica.

are you sure it wasn't "affection"?

100% sure, 100% of the time. Guaranteed.™

as long as that's the one without the lead singer of the cure whose name escapes me at the moment

^gets it. The original version of not in love (w/ Alice Glass vocals) is infinitely better

I dont want to be all "I prefer the early stuff" but AIR WAR was as good as it got for me with these guys. Second album was ok, third one was rubbish.

'Not in Love' is good, I think after hearing the Platinum Blonde original kinda makes me wanna hear more power-stadium-pop mix ups by CC.

I'm thinking 'Surrender'

Alice has announced on Twitter that she is leaving the band.

http://twitter.com/ALICEGLASS

you are nothing without your robot car, poetry girl

this sucks, although i understand it. the most recent crystal castles album was good but felt redundant. the first two albums are classics of the late aughts.

this sucks, although i understand it. the most recent crystal castles album was good but felt redundant. the first two albums are classics of the late aughts.

― Treeship, Wednesday, October 8, 2014 8:26 AM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it feels like a shame, but then, successive releases would have likely continued this trend. so it's probably for the best. maybe her solo stuff won't suck?

and so castles made of crystal, fall into the sistal, eventuallistal

having fallen hard for III this week, so, i have just ordered I and II via amazon marketplace

total price incl. postage : £6.66

how more goth can you get.

happened to listen to crystal castles (ii) today. was reminded of what bullshit the robert smith version of "not in love" is.

used to be heavy on one of my pandora stations, a really good productivity music band iirc

classic band

even if they plagiarized posters or whatever

new album, guess no one cares anymore

Quite a journey from first to last post huh

Most recent album was pretty good. Alice Glass ep was even better.

Alice Glass has just posted more fully about Ethan Kath and why she left the band. Trigger warnings noted, this is not an easy read.

http://www.alice-glass.com/cc/

holy fuck that is horrible

this is really awful. I love the first two crystal castles albums but they won’t sound the same to me anymore. i was always a fan of her vocals. she seemed so powerful — sometimes frightening — i never would have imagined that this was the actual dynamic in that band.

Wow, what a tough read. Kudos to her for finally getting out from his manipulative, abusive grip and calling him out on it.

this is really awful. I love the first two crystal castles albums but they won’t sound the same to me anymore. i was always a fan of her vocals. she seemed so powerful — sometimes frightening — i never would have imagined that this was the actual dynamic in that band.

― Treeship, Tuesday, October 24, 2017 6:57 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, this. Although we may have to have the good old bad-people-often-make-good-art-but-actually-let's-not-financially-support-this-fuck conversation.

Also, this story is out of the blue to me (and to this thread) but apparently it's not the first time she's spoken out - from the Crystal Castles Wikipedia page;

In early 2016, the band was included in the announced lineup for the 79 Cents event at SXSW, a concert showcase organized by Tumblr to highlight women's income disparity. Shortly after, this choice was criticized by former member Alice Glass:

As someone who knew Ethan Kath on a personal and professional level, it is my opinion that he is not an appropriate artist to be performing at a feminism-centric event.
— Alice Glass, in interview with The Verge

In reaction to this statement, the band was removed from the lineup.

didn't these guys use a woman with a black eye as an album cover once

can we change thread title to Crystal Castles (suck)

Idk “Black Panther” and the album version of “Not in Love” are amazing tracks

xp It was Madonna with a black eye, and they were sued by the artist for using it without his permission.

http://i51.tinypic.com/wmmqtf.jpg

It was pretty bad then, much worse with this context now.

I never really thought about the dude. My emotional investment in the band was based on loving the albums and being a fan of her as a vocalist, performer, and personality. So it’s an odd situation in terms of what to think of this material now.

Jesus I forgot about that.

Xp

I would also request that mods remove "rule" from the thread title

I never listened to this band but is their music really no longer good

don't need it replaced with "sucks" or whatever it's just....a little uncomfortable to leave it as is

Crystal Castles (problematic)

Maybe start a new thread? I know that ilx unlike other boards does encourage the use of older threads, but rather than retconning the opinions of a decade ago we could just move the discussion to somewhere with a more appropriate title.

looks like somebody fixed it

Didn't we already knew Ethan Kath was a huge douchebag? He wrote this when Alice released her first solo single:

https://i.imgur.com/0VNlN10.png

yeah you totally don't care dude

https://i.imgur.com/0VNlN10.png

yeah I remember that happening, and people generally thinking he was a fucking dickbag because of it. I certainly never gave them any time again after she left

Also someone should tell him CC best known song is Crimewave.

You know in the context of Alice's statement that facebook post from Ethan is proof that he is an insecure piece of shit and he did enjoy undermining her.

Seems all of CC upcoming concerts have been cancelled. Hope this is a career killer for him.

I can't defend Alice either though, two friends worked with her in some venues and she's also very rude and shitty to everyone.

Seems like that's two rather different things being compared.

also sounds like she may have some reasons for being emotionally uncomfortable in work situations with strangers

Yeah of course they’re different things you’re right. Ethan apologists on the CC fb page right now are making me sick.

So much of that fourth Crystal Castles album was trolling Alice. He diminished her in statements, literally wrote her out of the band's history in its official press material, and seemed to be mocking her (and really all women) with that cover. It all seemed distasteful at the time, but in light of all the new information it's fucking abhorrent—an entire album of an abuser taunting his victim. Maybe the most morally unconscionable record since Chris Brown's Graffiti.

Yeah I feel like Alice's past rep as "difficult" has to be understood in this context. First of all she was just a kid when she started, and who knows what kind of encouragement he gave her to act out, how much she was following his lead, etc. No consolation to people who had to deal with snotty-young-punk behavior, but she was clearly coming from a weird place throughout the CC experience.

I was surprised that until this week there hadn't been much observable backlash from their fanbase (and some people who liked them enough to buy tickets to a show didn't even know that Alice wasn't in the group anymore).

https://www.facebook.com/pictureplane/posts/1688757071187015

jfc some of the comments on that thread

"seemed to be mocking her (and really all women) with that cover" the girls on swings? really?

Four nearly identical girls, on an album that swaps out one woman for another like it's no big deal. Seemed meant as commentary on how replaceable/interchangeable women are to me. How did you read it?

i never got into this band but i almost did cos i liked the name alot (and she was v compelling as a performer) . i remember Hipster Runoff talked about them a lot and did some ironic/unironic objectifying of the lead singer. the whole thing is disgusting. really glad that she is out of that situation. holy crap.

fuck that fb post btw

i read it as some goth kids on a swing, but I didn't think about it very much either.

(I've never listened to this band btw, but at one point was booked to open for them on this tour so ended up reading way more about them than I ever wanted to)

#humblebrag

Swapping out Alice Glass for basically a doppelgänger when she quit was eerie

I feel very disturbed by all of this given how much I listened to those first two albums in college

i thought the last album cover was just a nod to the horror film meme re scary dead eyed kids.

I see someone's throwing a cow.

https://consequenceofsound.net/2017/11/crystal-castles-ethan-kath-sues-alice-glass-for-defamation/

Suing her for just 300k? This will not end well for him.

The actual facebook post with his comment is worse:

https://www.facebook.com/ccrystalccastles/photos/a.10151199490370335.807013.21720030334/10159505110390335/

Passive aggressive asshole makes me think Alice is the one telling the truth and it will backfire to him. He's publicly drawing her as a drug addict with mental issues to try to discredit her account and then goes on to suggest that the only reason she is coming forth is that CC has "new success" without her - despite the fact that almost nobody really cares about either of them anymore, music-wise.

Also what the fuck at him saying he fully supported her when she left? Talking shit left and right to the media about her the minute she left, publicly shaming her doesn't seem very supportive tbh

four more accounts of ethan's predatory behavior towards fans aged 14 to 19:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-indie-rocker-accused-of-sexually-abusing-young-fans

Surprised that nobody has replied to this. Then again, not sure what to say about it myself, apart from "fuck you Ethan Kath."

pretty much.

not being sarcastic or trying to make light of but the answer i truly think is far fewer people care about crystal castles than they did a few years ago

The transgressive thrill of their abrasive feral/digital sound is kind of undermined by knowing it was made by a predatory creep and a woman under duress. It's a shame because I did love it.

Of all the stories of abusers in music over the last couple of years, I think this is the one that sickens me the most, because this is the one critics were most complicit in. Sometimes the a musician is trash comes as a total surprise, but in this case the signs were there—three albums that sounded like a woman being abused; that vile Madonna image; Kath's horrid personality. We bought into myth that it was all just art. I feel retroactively gross for having enjoyed those albums so much.

The Madonna thing alone should have been a "fuck this, this is exploitative and gross" deal breaker, but we looked the other way.

three albums that sounded like a woman being abused

Genuinely curious what this means? (I've never listened to one of their albums)

Their stuff is all over YouTube, that's kind of a hyperbolic description of Alice Glass' raw, distressed vocal style rather than suggesting actual abuse took place during the recording. At least I assume it is.

It's really not hyperbolic at. Don't want to embed anything b/c I don't want to be responsible for giving this band a cent of revenue, but one of their defining aesthetics, starting with "Alice Practice" and peaking on their third album, is "subjugated woman trapped in torturous hell, clawing like fuck to get out." Which is pretty powerful until you learn that may not have been a vision she consented to; it was a situation her bandmate put her in. This shit genuinely sounds like torture porn now.

on the other hand, the idea that a critic, even the most empathetic possible listener paying the closest possible attention, would be able to (let alone expected to) make the leap from "this album in an abrasive-sounding genre sounds abrasive" to "a woman is actually being abused in real life" doesn't sound reasonable. (it also isn't a perfect one-to-one correspondence -- there are legions of cases of industry abuse where the music sounds perfectly shiny and innocuous.)

(also in case it isn't clear abusers are scum and fuck them)

I was going to say something akin to that but katherine said it better

yup

Glass herself has debunked the myth that “Alice Practice” etc were recorded without her consent or knowledge. She cites them as Kath’s campaign to minimise her creative role in the band, a bit like “well she didn’t know what she was doing but I saw the potential.” So that’s not abusive per se, whatever the ugliness of the relationships outside that context.

Although if you meant that the motivation behind the extremist/desperate tone of her vocals was her real life horrifying relationship, and that’s abhorrent, then yes agree absolutely.

yeah I agree there was no way to make that leap based on the music alone. But critics did look the other way when the band cynically exploited domestic abuse for marketing purposes, and critics readily bought into the narrative that both Kath and Glass were both difficult, almost equally problematic people. Again, not saying we could have or should have known what was actually going on, but there were some red flags that make me feel a shitload guiltier about having supported this band than I do compared to, like, Pinegrove or something

Although if you meant that the motivation behind the extremist/desperate tone of her vocals was her real life horrifying relationship, and that’s abhorrent

yeah exactly, even disregarding the circumstances of the recordings, which I can't know (maybe they were fun and enjoyable and a great experience for everybody), it's horrific knowing the muse wasn't fictional, that it was in some pretty clear ways a reflection of a toxic, controlling relationship. And it's really not much of a leap based on the reporting to guess that Kath justified his abusive tactics as "in the interest of the art" or some horrid BS like that

Extremely good news.

I won in court today!! the defamation lawsuit against me was dismissed !
thank you so much for the love and support throughout this ugly process

— ALICE GLASS (@ALICEGLASS) February 23, 2018

very nice

Excellent news

katherine otm

I really liked this band and definitely part of that was this obscurely sinister aspect of their sound, but now those features can only be understood as sickening. But only in retrosepcr. At the time I never thought it “sounded like a woman being abused,” I thought it sounded like a dynamic, unusal vocalist giving voice to feelings like desperation and anger.