Music aficionados and obsessives alway say that they prefer the concert atmosphere of a favorite band, because of how it allows them to get up close and personal with an artist, and see their energy flowing around them properly. The fact that my personal highlight of seeing Crystal Castles perform live at the Unitaur gig at Bristol’s rising star, Stokes Crofts’ Clockwork, was wrapping my arms around the slender body of Alice as she screamed in my ear, suggests that I definitely got a good impression of the band (Or the groundings of an abuse law-suit – Legal Fuhrer).
A bit of history. This wasn’t my very first experience with the Castles. They’ve played Bristol (to my knowledge) once before, at my numero uno electro-boat, The Thekla Social, back in August; the very same den where I heard their now signature party piece, Atlantis To Interzone (crystal castles remix). Sadly, their set lasted only fifteen minutes. At first, I thought this was due to their admittedly small repertoire, but it floated down the grape vine later that actually, there was more of a problem at hand. The stage of the Thekla is a bit too easy for people to leap onto to join the artists, something that tops the list as a pet peeve of the Canadian Duo, so when some girl tried to mimic the Aphrodite of Electro’s gyrations, it was the last straw. Knowing this, all I can say is damn the bitch for cutting it short.
The Castles , comprised of Ethin Fawn and Alice Glass, originate from Toronto, and were discovered the way all the cool kids of the last century (so it seems), through Myspace. The token bit of trivia that pops up around them is that their first single, Alice Practice, was actually the microphone test, possessing a raw glory that clearly attracted all the right kinds of attention. Their rise has been swift, spreading like wildfire across blogs (linked hundreds of times amongst the blogs that call the Hype Machine stable home), and then onto the live scene. Here in the UK, they’ve played Reading and Leeds (where the NME called them one of the most exciting bands of 2007), supported several bands, and held their own tour. Vice Magazine, the printed equivalent of that statue of Christ in Brazil, added them to the lineup for their Unitaur Tour, alongside These New Puritans and The Teenagers. It’s difficult to see these guys as anything other than living, breathing avatars of sheer Amphetamine goodness once you’ve held the pleasure of their company, let’s say that much.
There are several staples of their show that make them stand out. Almost all of them are the singer Alice. Beautiful in that sort of unconventional way, she WILL NOT BE IGNORED NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY. Anyone’s who heard the singles before will know that while, yes, technically there are lyrics somewhere in there, they’re hardly audible, if at all. In order to translate this to the real world…well, an unnamed associate here at DVNO described it as “her leaping around screaming ‘Rape me, Rape me’ for about half an hour”. Not quite, but something like that. To say that as a performer she’s ‘involved’ would be an understatement – I don’t personally know where she goes whens he leaves her body on auto-pilot on stage, but I imagine it’s nice as she just doesn’t come back, regardless of the danger her army of dedicated, testosterone fuelled man-boys can represent.
*awkward pause* I hugged her…
There’s more to Crystal Castles than dirty dancing and live Burlesque – they roll out special brands of their pounding pounding techno music too. All the tracks have the bass quad-sep-tippled for a start. Ethin’s mixing and skills are as performance to the success of the show as Alice is to my ability to perform in bed. Their light-show consists of a Strobe being (I think) abused by Electro-Puck next to him, so there’s a certain degree of freedom, unlike, say, pretty much every other act. It’s rare that I say this, but I’d probably rather a live EP from Castles than the Daft Punk offering. Admittedly overplay of the latter has been to the extent that I now blink in time to Robot Rock, but the message stands. It pulls away from the sense that you’re listening to someone being violated inside a Wii that you get from the lighter, higher-pitched-and-paced download offerings.
