Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles
Crystal Castles have finally unleashed their debut album on the public's eardrums and it's not bad at all. First things first, the album sounds familiar first time round due to several of their "classic" tracks being placed in amongst newer tracks and older, less well known tracks. For instance, tracks 5 and 6 are Xxzxcuzx Me and Air War respectively, while Loving And Caring and Knights repeat the same trick in the second half of the album. Good news is that they all sound as top quality as they always have, with the exception of Air War, which has been given a work over and has a new extended and quite relaxed ending on it now. Though it's quite feasible that this isn't necessarily a new version, it's just that i saw no need to download a spare copy of it having ripped it from the Digital Penetration a long time ago.
More good news is that the rest of the album, while keeping one foot firmly in their 8-bit and chaotic punk roots, uses it's other foot to explore new avenues, taking in influences seemingly from the Human League to ambient electronica artists such as Nathan Fake which keeps the record feeling fresh despite the high ratio older songs here. In fact, one might say that they're achieved an almost perfect balance between the old and the new, resulting in what is perhaps the most forward thinking, experimental and fantastic 8-bit album we've seen to date.
James Hoste
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