Crystal Castles Break Stuff And Cause Riots

"Obnoxious" is a word that Ethan Kath likes to use a lot when describing Crystal Castles' supernatural electronic sound.

By combining broken circuit boards, Ataris and screamer/vocalist Alice Glass' screeching disco cries, the Toronto duo have become a hot little item of late. They've toured all over Europe, are currently criss-crossing North America, and have remixed tracks for Liars, Klaxons and Uffie. Above all, they've lived for causing revolt wherever they plug in.

"The times when we've been able to create riots, those have been our greatest achievements," Kath says. "For example, we played the grand opening of the Rough Trade record store in London, England, and they had a show booked every night of the opening month and we were the third show.

"Our show was mental because too many people showed. The store fit 200 people and there was another 300 waiting outside and everyone went crazy and started breaking the store shelves and tables. Rough Trade ended up canceling every other show that month.

"This kid paid us to play his birthday party in L.A., and that's the background we come from is house parties. All the noise bands we love would play basements, so we went to play this house party and we were so loud, neighbours complained and the cops showed up. And all the kids started throwing their beer bottles at the cops. So they called for back-up and it came in the form of a helicopter. People were trying to hit the helicopter, which caused a huge mess of broken glass all over the streets."

Crystal Castles' next great hurdle will be finding out whether they can cause riots on public transit or in bedrooms, libraries or wherever else kids listen to music these days, when their self-titled debut is released on March 18 via Last Gang Records. The album will contain not-yet-officially-released singles and new material, all produced by Kath.

"We have the first mic check we ever did with Alice, to an acoustic song we did in Tokyo last month — the entire span of our band so far," is how Kath describes the album's breadth.

Crystal Castles will attempt to cause riots at these shows:

Feb. 21 Toronto, ON @ Wrongbar
Feb. 22 Hamilton, ON @ Casbah
Feb. 23 London, ON @ Call The Office
Feb. 29 Winnipeg, MB @ Pyramid Cabaret
March 1 Regina, SK @ The Exchange
March 2 Calgary, AB @ The Warehouse
Mar. 3 Edmonton, AB @ The Starlite
March 5 Vancouver, BC @ Richard's On Richards
March 27 Montreal, QC @ Musee Juste Pour Rire
March 28 Toronto, ON @ Circa