Crystal Castles

Crystal Castles (from English  -  "Crystal Castles") is a Canadian experimental electronic music group . The project was founded by Ethan Cat and Alice Glass in 2003 in Toronto . Now the team consists of Ethan Cat and Edith Frances. Since their inception, the duo quickly became famous for their performances and homemade lo-fi recordings. Crystal Castles' creative path began with the release of limited singles on vinyl records. between 2006 and 2007, followed by the release of three critically acclaimed albums.

Ethan and Alice's first song together was "Alice Practice", which was recorded in 2006. The track was posted on the Internet in its original form and attracted the attention of listeners, after which the duo decided to finalize the song and release it officially. In the same year, the band released the EP Alice Practice on vinyl , which included 4 songs.

The debut album titled Crystal Castles was released in 2008 . In 2009, NME placed it on its "Top 100 Greatest Albums of the Decade" list at number 39.

In 2010, the band released their second album, Crystal Castles (II) . This release was their first album to chart on the Billboard 200 . It included the single "Not in Love", a collaboration with Robert Smith of The Cure . This is the first composition of Crystal Castles, which hit the world charts. "Not in Love" is a cover version of a song by Platinum Blonde.

The third album called Crystal Castles (III) was released on November 12, 2012 . It was Tumblr and Hype Machine 's Top Album of the Year. The singles from it were "Plague", "Wrath of God", "Sad Eyes" and "Affection". This is the last album released with Alice Glass.

At the end of 2014, Alice announced that she was leaving the group due to personal and professional reasons. In 2015, Edith Francis took over as vocalist for Crystal Castles, with "Frail" being her first song.

In 2016, the release of the fourth full-length album took place, which was called Amnesty (I) .

History

^{2006–2009: Band formation and debut album}

Jamgoose met Alice in Toronto when she was 15 years old and asked her to record vocals for tracks he had been working on since 2003. This led to the creation of the track "Alice Practice", which attracted people's attention when it was posted online. The musicians decided to unite in a group and jointly chose the name Crystal Castles , which was taken from a replica in one of the scenes of the animated series She-Ra: Princess of Power ( eng. She-Ra: Princess of Power ): "In crystal castles, the fate of the world is safe" ( eng. "The fate of the world is safe in Crystal Castles" ). Alice Practice was the band's first release and was released on vinyl in 2006. [fourteen]

In 2006 and 2007, Crystal Castles released several singles on 7" discs with the help of independent labels. In February 2008, Kat stated in an interview that his goal was "to make the most annoying sounds that Alice can scream to, so that later he can get to the opening act for Melt Banana ". In 2008, the debut album of the same name was released , which took 39th position in the list of "Top 100 Greatest Albums of the Decade" according to NME .

^{2010–2011: Crystal Castles (II)}

The band's second album titled Crystal Castles (II) (sometimes just (II) or also Crystal Castles , like the first album of the same name) was released on May 24, 2010. The material was originally supposed to be released in June 2010, but an early version of the album leaked onto the internet in April, prompting the label to push the release to an earlier date. The album was quite successful and reached #48 in the UK , #188 in the US , and #25 in Australia .

The first two singles from the album were "Celestica" and "Baptism". The track "Not in Love", a collaboration with Robert Smith of The Cure , was released as the third single. In 2011, Crystal Castles headlined the NME Awards Tour in the UK. Then Alice Glass had a broken ankle, but the performances still took place.

^{2012–2014: Crystal Castles (III) and departure of Alice Glass}

In March 2012, Crystal Castles announced their temporary move to Warsaw to begin recording their third album there. On June 25, the single "Plague" was released, and on September 26, the group released their second single, "Wrath of God". Crystal Castles (III) (sometimes (III) or simply Crystal Castles , as was the case with the first and second releases) was originally supposed to be released on November 5, 2012, but the release was pushed back to November 7. The third single from the album was the track "Sad Eyes", which was released separately on January 23, 2013. In April of the same year, the song "Affection" was released as the fourth single from the album.

In October 2014, in a Facebook post, Alice Glass announced that she was leaving Crystal Castles, that the project had ceased to exist, and that she was starting a solo career. The band's manager informed fans that the Crystal Castles project would continue without Alice. Three years later, in October 2017, Alice Glass published a text on her official website accusing Ethan of sexual, physical and psychological abuse, explaining her departure from the group.

^{2015 - present: Amnesty (I)}

On April 16, 2015, Crystal Castles released a single titled "Frail", the first song recorded by Edith Francis, the band's new vocalist. On July 2 of the same year, the single "Deicide" was released. The first performance of Crystal Castles with the new line-up took place on November 27, 2015 at the Soundswild Festival in Johannesburg .

On February 23 and 24, 2016, the duo played two concerts in London, which were completely sold out. In July of that year, Crystal Castles released the single "Char" and announced their fourth studio album, Amnesty (I) , which was released on August 19.

In 2016, Crystal Castles were included in a list of artists performing at an event called 79 Cents (as part of SXSW ) hosted by Tumblr , which focuses on issues of gender inequality . In an article in The Verge , Alice Glass expressed her opinion that Ethan Cat was not the right person to speak at a feminist event. The band was later dropped from the list of artists performing at SXSW. [thirty]

Since the fall of 2017, Crystal Castles have suspended their concert activity and stopped publishing posts on the band's social media pages. The musicians did not publicly announce the end of the project. On November 4, 2017, an image was posted to the group's Facebook page with text by Ethan Cat saying that "false accusations take votes away from real victims, and that's what upsets me the most about this whole situation."

Musical style

The style of Crystal Castles was described by Drowned in Sound as "fierce and suffocating 2D layers of Gameboy glitches , with bombastic drums that bruise and pierce the skull with piercing force, burrowing deep into the brain like a fever" . According to the BBC , when you listen to Crystal Castles, you "will be thrown to the mercy of fate without insurance in a maelstrom of deafening pain. You will feel like you can do anything in this world, but this "anything" ultimately means nothing

With the release of their second album, the duo's music became more "aesthetic and clear" thanks to "a skilful and polished blend of icy synth-pop with red-hot noise ".

During the recording of the third album, Ethan adopted the "strictly no computers" rule, he also abandoned the old synthesizers and keyboards that he played before. With this, Kat explained that he wanted "the album to sound like a completely different and new experience" for Crystal Castles. The musicians decided to limit themselves to only one take for each song, as they believed that "the first attempt is the most accurate expression of ideas"

Controversy

^{Copyright disputes}

In mid-2008, Crystal Castles was at the center of two controversies. Pitchfork and Torontoist published articles about how the duo used an image by Trevor Brown without his permission. A picture showing singer Madonna with a hematoma under her eye was used by Crystal Castles as the band's logo. The issue was resolved after the musicians bought the rights to use the image from Brown.

One of Ethan Cat's early demos called "Insectica (CC vs Lo-Bat Version)", which was not officially released, sampled a track by another musician, Lo-Bat, without permission . A few years later, the record label discovered the track in an archive and uploaded it to the label's MySpace page without Ethan's permission and without identifying the original composition from which the sample was taken. "Insectica (CC vs Lo-Bat Version)" features a portion of a Lo-Bat track called "My Little Droid Needs a Hand", which was released under a Creative Commons license . Crystal Castles' "Love and Caring" features a drum sample from the track "Sunday" by Covox.

^{Sexual harassment and allegations of misconduct}

On October 24, 2017, Alice Glass, already a former vocalist of Crystal Castles, published a public statement on her official website in which she accused Ethan Cat of sexual, physical and mental abuse, which was the reason for leaving the group. The indictment details the events that began when Alice was aged 15 and was just starting to record with Ethan, up until her departure from Crystal Castles. On the same day, Kat publicly denied all allegations through his lawyer, calling them "pure fiction." Cat later sued Alice , but his claim was dismissed.

Discography

^{Studio albums}

1. Trash Trash Trash (2007, bootleg )
2. Remixed Rewired (2008, bootleg )
3. Crystal Castles (2008)
4. Crystal Castles II (2010)
5. III (2012)
6. Amnesty (I) (2016)

^EPs

1. Alice Practice (2006)
2. Doe Deer [en] (2010)

^Singles

1. " Crimewave [en] " (2007)
2. " Air War " (2007)
3. " Courtship Dating [en] " (2008)
4. " Vanished [en] " (2008)
5. " Celestica [en] " (2010)
6. Baptism (2010)
7. " Not in Love [en] " (feat. Robert Smith ; 2010)
8. " Plague [en] " (2012)
9. Wrath of God (2012)
10. "Affection" (2012)
11. " Frail [en] " (2014)
12. Deicide (2015)
13. «Concrete» (2016)
14. Char (2016)
15. Fleece (2016)

^Remixes

1. Remixed Rewired (2008, bootleg ) contains all of the remixed tracks below.
2. Klaxons - "Atlantis to Interzone" (2006)
3. GoodBooks [en] - "Leni" (2006)
4. The Little Ones [en] - "Lovers Who Uncover" (2006)
5. Uffie - "Make It Hot" (2007)
6. The Whip [en] - "Divebomb" (2007)
7. Bloc Party - "Hunting For Witches" (2007)
8. Switches [en] - "Lay Down the Law" (2007)
9. Sohodolls - "Trash the Rental" (2007)
10. Liars - "It Fit When I Was a Kid" (2007)
11. Health - "Crimewave" (2008)
12. White Lies - "Death" (2009)
13. Health - "Eat Flesh" (2010)
14. Sidewalks and Skeletons - Violent Dreams (2013)
15. Mr. Kitty - "Frail" (2016)
16. Ghostsinners - "Baptism" (2020)