KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * * *
Label: Shock
Verdict: Electronic excellence over shadowed by occasional annoyances
There was a time during the 90s when happy hardcore and the more brutalised industrial strength version, gabber techno, pushed by bands like Ultraviolence, was lifting varnish off dance floors everywhere. It was big, and for the most part, highly irritating.
Crystal Castles, a Toronto duo made up of multi-instrumentalist Ethan Kath and vocalist Alice Glass, delve briefly into this brain-rattling music on the punishing Alice Practice, with mangled squelches and Glass' warped shriek, and the uppity hammerings of Xxxzxcuzx Me. But it's those niggling tracks and other outbursts, which try to be clever but come across annoying, that take away from an otherwise excellent, if a little long, album.
They're at their best, and most inspired, with the gentle glitch and robotic jaunt - in a Kraftwerk rather than Daft Punk way - of songs like Crimewave, Magic Spells and the delicious lope of Air War. Elsewhere there's a coy, childlike playfulness to the robotic new wave of Vanished, the throbbing succulent synth of Reckless and the camp oonst of Black Panther.
But at 16 tracks it all starts sounding samey. They could have culled the gabber-inspired tunes for starters and left us all a lot, well, happy, without the hardcore.
