Thursday, January 16, 2014

The Crystal Method - The Crystal Method

The Crystal Method
The Crystal Method
14 January 2014
Tiny e

2.5 stars out of 5

 
I admit to having purchased The Crystal Method’s debut LP Vegas when it was “hot” back in 1997. Everyone I knew shook their booty to “Busy Child” in the club (yes, “club” in the singular, the one club we had in my home town that was worth going to at all). But at the same time we all felt guilty about it. We had fun, but we knew it wasn’t remotely “cool.” We all knew, deep down in our hearts, that these guys from LA were just recycling the breakbeats that the “real” producers in the UK were creating. Some of us (myself not included) even bought Tweekend but had lost interest in it by the time we got it home from the store. In most collections the CD is probably still in the shrinkwrap.

Now it’s 2014 and, perhaps confusingly to most, The Crystal Method have released their fifth LP, meaning they snuck in two others while I wasn’t looking. The Crystal Method sounds pretty much exactly as I expected it to sound like: a collection of sounds that were fresh in the UK two or three years ago, assembled into danceable tracks, occasionally featuring guest vocalists to appeal to the more “pop music” crowd. You’ve got your dubsteppity wobbles, your squeaks and squelches, most of it sounding suspiciously close to (or slightly past) its expiry date. The beats are too pedestrian to make you include this LP on your listening-to-at-home rotation, and the vocal tracks are a little too Delerium-esque for comfort.

I mean, hey, if you just want to have a dance party in your living room, have no clue about music, and have a bunch of friends with a similar lack of taste who just want to bust a move, then, by all means, fire up The Crystal Method on the shoesaw. And, you know what? If you invited me over, I’d probably dance to it myself after a few rum and cokes. But you can’t make me like it. No way, dude.

reviewed by Richard Krueger

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