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03 Ağustos 2008 07:18:51
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http://www.dancestar.com - The Crystal Method play live at The DanceStar Awards Miami Beach. The Crystal Method's Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland helped re-establish America's place on the dance music map with the acclaimed 1994 City of Angels single "Now Is the Time," which married samples and sound bites with pulsing breakbeats and electronically generated hooks.

Several singles, compilation tracks and remixes later, The Crystal Method started recording songs for Vegas (Outpost Recordings), their debut album, released Aug. 26, 1997. The two first worked together as DJs in their hometown of Las Vegas, but it was a move to Los Angeles that precipitated the band's surge to the forefront of America's burgeoning electronic dance movement. After "Now Is the Time" made them an underground sensation, The Crystal Method were asked to open an L.A. show for England's up-and-coming Chemical Brothers (then still operating under the already-in-use Dust Brothers moniker) in January 1995. "I was scared to death because I'd never been in a band or anything. I was visibly shaking," Jordan says of his first live experience. "But several beers later, we calmed down a little, and it was great.

Even though it was our first show, we totally tried to decide what kind of live act we'd be - whether we'd just bring our studio on stage or if we'd do it more as a performance. So we pretty much went the performance route, and we ended up having an excellent crowd response." The Crystal Method have since balanced their time precariously between the studio and clubs. Besides sculpting distinctive songs and remixing tracks for Moby, Black Grape, Keoki and Zen Cowboys, among others, the duo has set dance floors ablaze spinning discs from Toronto to Florida and from Seattle to San Diego.

A gig at Boy George's London club Smirk in June 1996 garnered accolades from crafty Brit critics quick to notice similarities between The Crystal Method's high-octane breakbeat electrono-rock and music coming from England's digital denizens. "We know we're different," Jordan says of the comparisons to other electronic bands. "We're more song-oriented and more melodic.

That's not to say bands who don't write or record music that way are doing anything wrong, but this is the way we approach things. There are similarities between us and AC/DC, too, you know?" According to Kirkland, growing up amid the flash floods of popular music genres in the 1970s and '80s helped shape The Crystal Method's blend of everything from soulful grooves to rock flourishes to bouncy trip-hop to quaking drum and bass. "My parents were young when they had me - my mother was 15," he explains, "so I was raised with my mom listening to disco and my dad listening to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin.

Then I got into heavy metal and then Depeche Mode." Jordan cuts in: "Zeppelin and Stevie Wonder influenced us more than Aphex Twin." Their eclectic background is exhibited on Vegas in standout cuts like "Keep Hope Alive." Originally released as the duo's second single for L.A.'s independent City of Angels label, the song features a sample of Jesse Jackson's rousing speech at the 1992 Democratic National Convention, spliced, diced and mixed in with careening sonic washes and a breakbeat that's got more kick than an outraged mule on amphetamines.

Speaking of drugs, don't jump to any conclusions about the band's name based on Vegas tracks like "Trip Like I Do," "Vapor Trail" and "She's My Pusher." The name actually derives from a woman named Crystal whom Jordan and Kirkland simultaneously had a crush on. "A friend of ours, a rapper, heard about our little dilemma and blurted out, 'Ah, the Crystal Method.' We just liked the way it sounded," Kirkland explains. The duo does, however, have something of a clandestine lab rigged up in the two-car garage on the property of the house they share in Glendale, Calif., but it's not for manufacturing illicit substances.