The Making of the commercial:

Behind the scenes of the world’s first timesculpture TV ad, created by Toshiba. See more at www.toshiba.co.uk/upscaling

EDIT ONCE AGAIN, CC FAN COMPILATION AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD ONCE MORE (everything is tagged properly and all tracks which were censored are now removed): http://www.sendspace.com/file/sjlzj4

ENJOY! WOO!

Cover credit goes to: http://waffelgirl.deviantart.com/art/crystal-castles-83408892

Musicians who participated, I figured I put up myspaces instead in case some didn’t have a “site”:

http://www.myspace.com/trebledeathsystem

http://www.myspace.com/worspectra

http://www.myspace.com/classiccult420

http://www.myspace.com/faimkills

http://www.myspace.com/excusefilippa

http://www.myspace.com/idonthaveabandyet

http://www.myspace.com/chiralmuzik

http://www.myspace.com/shvrz

http://www.myspace.com/zelenka101

http://www.myspace.com/lazrtag

If I missed you, it’s because I don’t believe you ever gave me a link to your site. If you’re reading this, please send me a message (or leave a comment here) with a URL to your site, so I can put it up ASAP. Thanks.

Those in the Cali area (and/or for those visiting the area): Come out to support Crystal Castles this Halloween Night!! We here at Crystalcastles.org will be attending and hope to see you there! Come one and come all! Lets show our support! See you there!

HARD Site:http://www.hardfest.com/

Interview source: http://www.hardfest.com/cc.html

“Since forming in the summer of 2004, Crystal Castles, the Toronto-based duo of Ethan Fawn and Alice Glass have amassed a cult following through their uncompromising and intense delivery, a slew of limited edition singles, and shows packed solely from word of mouth. Their 7” singles have sold out almost instantly, they have toured extensively in the UK, Europe, and North America with artists such as the Klaxons and Metric, and remixed songs for Bloc Party and the Klaxons, among others.

Crystal Castles have attracted much attention from those trying to pigeonhole the band as leaders for such media-hyped subgenres as “8-bit” and “nu-rave”, however their nihilist aesthetic and diverse body of work suggests their intentions and potential are worth much more. The following is a selection of frequently asked questions that the band would like to clarify, of which their answers are completely sincere and not contrived.

Q: How did you meet? We, Alice (of the noise band Fetus Fatale) and Ethan (of garage-metal band Jakarta) met reading to the blind (it was community service work). After discussing modern music, and how no one is doing anything new, we decided we would try to create a new sound and genre as best we could.

Q: When did you start? How did your first microphone check become your first single? In the summer of 2004, i put together a cd of instrumentals and gave them to alice to write vocal parts. When she was ready, we went to a local studio to record our first 5 songs. When we were done, the studio gave us 6 songs. They had secretly recorded the microphone test and included it on the CD. I called the extra track “Alice Practice”. Merok Records (London) heard the track and wanted to put it out on 7 inch, as the a-side. Our first microphone test became our first single. Merok pressed 500 copies and it sold out in 3 days. 7 ruined lives later and now this is our life.

Q: Is it true your sound developed from mixing an old arcade machine chip with your keyboard or something like that? No. I smushed a birthday cake into my keyboard.

Q: What sort of influences do you guys have? Listening to your work, I can genuinely say that it sounds unlike anything else around these days. There are bits and pieces of other genres, but I think you described it best by saying you “play rough.” What sort of stuff did you listen to and enjoy to get to this point, though? Our music isn’t influenced by anyone. In our heads, what we’re doing is completely original. If we’re wrong and someone else is doing this out there, that’s fine too. We don’t care.

Q: Describe your aesthetic. Large shiny chunks of vomit.

Q: Where did you come up with the name Crystal Castles? We are named after She-Ra, The Princess of Power’s fortress in the sky. The commercial for the toy version of the castle includes the lines “The fate of the world is safe in Crystal Castles” and “Crystal Castles, the source of all power.”

Q: Are you named after the Atari videogame “Crystal Castles”? No, We didn’t know about the videogame at the time.

Q: You don’t seem to care about how much press you get. Why? We’re not doing this for anyone’s approval.

Q: Are there artists you’d like to work with? The Stooges in 1969. Joy Division in 1976.

Q: In your opinion, do you think music like yours and what’s going on in England at the moment has a chance to spread in America? That question reminds me of herpes.

Q: Someone once misquoted you and said you started by accident. Explain what you really said. I told an interviewer that the song “Alice Practice” was an accident (Alice was secretly recorded while testing the studio’s microphones). The interviewer quoted me as saying the band was an accident. As if we fell on a keyboard and 40 songs just appeared.

Q: Was there anything you listened to or experienced maybe when you were younger that has influenced your sound? Nothing from our youth has influenced our sound. We are influenced by change.”

source: http://www.nme.com/magazine

Don’t forget to pick up a copy this week’s NME: WHY are Crystal Castles half naked and covered in blood? Pick up an issue and find out!

Can download for free @ www.myspace.com/zelenka101

source: http://www.independent.co.uk

They annoyed Madonna. Glastonbury pulled the plug on them. The police arrested their singer at a gig. No surprise, then, that Crystal Castles won’t show their faces. The Canadian duo talk to Gavin Cumine

Crystal Castles are the Canadian duo, Ethan Kath and Alice Grass. Their nightmarish cyborg punk, encapsulating noise and warped melodies have captured the hearts of club kids around the world.

Their self-titled debut album is filled with futuristic electro noises, holding moods and sensations that leave the listener spellbound but are sketchy on autobiographical detail. Crystal Castles are wreathed in mystery; they have given only a handful of interviews and agreed to few photoshoots – even fewer where they reveal their faces.

When I meet Kath, the band’s multi-instrumentalist and producer, his eyes are drowsy and almost concealed behind a black hoodie. It’s been a summer of constant travelling, and it looks to be catching up with him. But he’s not lost sight of why they’re doing this.

“Alice and I are focused on writing songs and playing live, and anything else around that doesn’t matter,” Kath says. “We say no to a lot of stuff. We just played a festival and every band was complaining they had two hours of press to do, but we just say no. If you don’t want to do it, just say no. Alice and I have created a band to make music, not talk about it.

“To be honest, we are shocked by the attention we are getting. We never saw it coming. Our favourite bands are noise bands like Health. We were planning a basement tour together to play at parties. Health had the idea of doing a joint seven-inch where they covered us on one side and we sampled them on the other. That’s what ‘Crimewave’ is. Next thing, it’s all over the internet and this label from London want to release it. It wasn’t meant to be a big thing.”

Almost overnight, Crystal Castles were in a music scene they had never been a part of, in a country they’d never been too, far removed from their hidden existence in Toronto.

“We skipped the Toronto scene. We put the songs together there, but we never played any songs or gave out CDs. We make music for ourselves. It’s a big surprise that anybody is listening.”

“When ‘Alice Practice’ came out, everything changed. It sold out 500 copies in three days. When they said they wanted to make it the A-side, I told them it isn’t even a song, just Alice testing the microphone. The next thing we are flown to London, we’re sleeping on the Klaxons’ floor and we only had a couple of songs to play. Coming here opened up the world for us.”

Crystal Castles are a challenge for the listener, with myriad sounds crammed into their record, each song an attempt to do something new. From the twisted vocals of “Untrust Us” to the soothing sparseness of “Tell Me What To Swallow”, Kath’s approach to music is minimalist and organic.

“I use a 1996 desktop PC to record all the music, so it’s a massive set of waves, and then I just chop them up. The equipment is old, but it’s all I need. It’s about the idea. You need to keep it simple. Once I have my tracks I’ll go to a studio to record Alice’s voice, but I take it back and mess around with it. Everything is lo-fi, but I want her voice to sound of a higher quality.”

There’s a sense of freedom in both band members, which seems to stem from a love of punk. “When I met Alice, she was a 14-year-old squatter living in an abandoned house with crusties. She lived and breathed Seventies and Eighties punk bands. I thought it would be interesting for her to write over these tracks. She loves what we do, but she doesn’t even listen to electronic music, except for New Order.”

Both Kath and Glass seem rootless, removed from any city or scene or indeed any sound that’s around at the moment. It makes them seem entirely unpredictable, totally original – something the band enjoys.

“A lot of people want to tie us to a city,” Kath says. “Yeah, we met in Toronto, found a room, made some songs, but then we disappeared. We left. We didn’t play there, we were never part of what was going on there, so we do feel rootless. It is just how things happened.

Crystal Castles are often included in cool lists in magazines such as NME, and on teen TV shows like Skins. That lays them open to the charge of being mere fashion accessories for hip kids, and comment on the band is often laced with scepticism. Controversy seems to surround them. This year, the Castles have been accused of using an image of a black-eyed Madonna on merchandise without the artist’s permission, and using samples without proper clearance. At Glastonbury, the stage antics of Glass, climbing the rigging and stage-diving, led the organisers to cut short their set. In March, Glass broke her ribs in a car crash.

“Things are always getting out of control. There are always problems,” Kath says. “We liked the Madonna image because we thought it was a symbol of a strong female, and that even though she has been battered, she is still standing and staring defiantly. Nothing is going to knock her down. It’s a perfect symbol of a strong female. All of a sudden, people think we are for battering women and it is all based on people’s perceptions.

“We love when people dissect things and make their own meanings. It’s just funny. Because our favourite bands were punk bands, those bands were either loved or hated and we see that happening to us now.

“At a festival in Brighton, they called the cops on Alice for riling up the crowd. After our show, the promoter said the police were there to arrest her and we needed to disappear, so we had to get in a getaway car. The live experience is all about Alice; she is a mental case on stage, and is just uncontrollable. She loses herself in the music. After the show, she is covered in bruises and she can’t remember how they got there.”

Indeed, if there is a star in this band it is, rather reluctantly, Alice. When I meet her she’s sitting quietly, cigarette dangling from her hand. Tall, stick thin, with ashen skin and eyes scorched by thick black mascara, she looks as if she could have crashed to earth through a black hole from another galaxy.

Her lyrics conjure up visions like something out of a David Cronenberg film, a seemingly placid surface hiding a surreal darkness. “I wanted to say things I haven’t heard anybody say before,” she says. “There are a lot of bands where the music is all right but the lyrics are crap. I didn’t want to be like that. I think everyone is a little psychotic, so they can be a little messed up.”

You could say that: “Courtship Dating”, for example, is about human taxidermy, the idea of preserving the beauty of a lover the way you would an animal. It’s this dark element that sets Crystal Castles apart right now.

The album ‘Crystal Castles’ is out now on Different

source:http://www.exclaim.ca/articles/generalarticlesynopsfullart.aspx?csid1=0&csid2=844&fid1=34040

“Electro shit-disturbers Crystal Castles have revealed they were forced to use a getaway car to escape Johnny Law (aka the cops) after an especially wild UK show. While talking to the Independent, the band’s Ethan Kath (aka Claudio Palmieri) told the newspaper that during a recent festival gig in Brighton the police were called due to the erratic behaviour of partner in crime, vocalist Alice Glass.

“They called the cops on Alice for riling up the crowd,” he explained. “After our show, the promoter said the police were there to arrest her and we needed to disappear, so we had to get in a getaway car.”

While Kath didn’t out and out define “riling up,” he did say Glass has a way of losing it on stage. “The live experience is all about Alice,” he said. “She is a mental case on stage, and is just uncontrollable. She loses herself in the music. After the show, she is covered in bruises and she can’t remember how they got there.”

To get a better idea on what Kath is talking about, here are the band’s upcoming North American tour dates:

10/23 New York, NY - Webster Hall
10/24 Toronto, ON - Circa
10/25 Chicago, ON - Metro
10/27 Vancouver, BC - Commodore Ballroom
10/ 28 Seattle, WA - Neumos
10/29 San Francisco, CA - The Independent
10/31 Los Angeles, CA - HARD
11/01 Las Vegas, NV - Fabulous Festival, Orleans Arena
11/06 Mexico City, Mexico - Pabellon de Alta Tecnologia “

Many of you may have been wondering about the Crimewave Video, from the mouth of Ethan Kath, to NME’s Alex Miller:

“The last thing we wanted to do was make a video for Crimewave. Our label kept bothering us and everyone we know for a video. They were going to make a video themselves and then send us the bill! To stop this from happening we decided to put together a fake video. The label doesn’t know that we simply stole footage from a hardcore gay porn film by a legendary art movie director. We had a friend take all the non-sex scenes from Bruce LaBruce’s “Otto” and cut it to the track. The label fell for it. They thought we had gone out and filmed a video of a boy wandering around. We didn’t get charged for the video the label were going to pay someone to make, which we would have rejected anyways.”

Source from Andy from the Official Crystal Casltes Myspace: http://myspace.com/crystalcastles

So were gathering together a compilation of Crystal Castle remixes/covers made by the fans for the fans. We’ll have more details soon in the coming weeks. At the moment were working out all the details, but once we have it all set, the material will be release for free via torrent to share around the globe with all CC fans. A collective, if you will, of CC fan musicians spreading the CC love around the world.

If you wish to submit a piece: PM me through this board or you can hit us up on the myspace page: http://myspace.com/crystalcastlesfans

We’ll have a contact page soon enough through the mainpage and will update this post to let everyone know.

Should be interesting what people submit, we already have a few, and let me tell you: they are above and beyond awesome! You’re not gonna wanna miss this!

Stay tuned! And spread the word!

EDIT: CONTACT PAGE UP! http://crystalcastles.org/contact

Welcome to Crystal Castles News & Fan site, made by the fans, for the fans! Currently under construction, but lots of amazing things to come! All concerning the Crystal Castles world! :D Enjoy guys! Once again: WELCOME! ENJOY YOUR STAY! Make yourself comfy at the message board while we fix up this place, you’re not gonna wanna miss this! http://board.crystalcastles.org

Don’t forget to add us on myspace! http://myspace.com/crystalcastlesfans