Discoveries: Crystal Castles

Thank any god for the existence of Last.fm and the streamable radios it provides. Sometimes you just don't know what you can find while listening an artist's radio. A couple of days ago I spent some time listening to the Peaches' station and I got to hear a bunch of quality bands and singers and some great songs. But the one that actually draw my attention was the track "Untrust Us" by the Canadian electronic group Crystal Castles. Apart from the grammatical mistake in the title this proved to be an excellent track.

I just couldn't help myself and after hearing this band on two more stations I got their eponymous album and listened to it from top to bottom. It surely is not the typical stuff I listen to, because I am not very much a fan of bitpop, but Crystal Castles manage to sound as a bitpop group without sounding as the soundtrack to Super Mario Bros. Some people define them as an 8-bit band, but to me they are an experimental electronica act influences by console games' music.

The vocalist Alice Glass is a psycho bitch in the good manner. Well, she's not as crazy as my beloved Peaches, but she somehow the electronica equivalent of Avril Lavigne just without the sloppiness and that she actually cares of the quality of the music she records. Ethan Kath, the original creator of Crystal Castles, has the looks of a Death From Above 1979 member, but definitely doesn't make music any way close to the screamo altrock of this prominent Canadian group.