Crystal Castles

Crystal Castles is a canadian electronic duo from Toronto. The band takes their name from a toy series produced by Mattel and not the Atari videogame. Ethan Kath (multi-instrumentalist) and Alice Glass (vocals) make up the duo. The band formed in 2004 and started as an instrumental side-project for Kass, but Glass provided vocals for several songs and one of them, called Alice Practice, was accidentally put on their myspace. Glass was not even aware it was on the internet until record companies began calling and offering deals. Crystal Castles sound is based on heavy sampling, fragmented electronic sounds as well as distorted female vocals. When you hear Crystal Castle's music the first thing that comes to mind is vintage videogames. It sounds as if all those 8-bit games have been spliced together to form music. They have one full-length self-titled ablum which came out in 2008. It received good reviews and press and the band has played a number of festivals as well as touring in Europe, Japan, Australia and the United States. The band is infamous for its wild and chaotic live shows. The band also remixes scores of songs including material from Bloc Party, The Klaxons, and Uffie. My favorite tracks are Vanished, Courtship Dating and Air War.