New Year’s Eve in Brooklyn with Crystal Castles
As the ball dropped in Times Square across the river in Manhattan, the first of two sets by the electronic trash duo of Ethan Kath and Alice Glass had yet to start. With doors opening at 9pm, most assumed that Crystal Castles would hit the stage at 11 and conclude the set to bring in the new year. As we entered around 10pm word quickly spread that CC would not be taking the stage until midnight. CC’s second set was scheduled for a 2am start. Ethan was also scheduled to DJ down the street in between sets, but supposedly never made it to that one.
Much like their Webster Hall show we attended in October, CC played a short but violent set. Ethan got behind his Korg MS-2000B analog synth/Alesis ADAT HD24 setup, and current live drummer live drummer Michael Bell, member of Lymbyc Systym, climbed behind his kit just a few minutes after midnight. Alice, dressed in all black, followed a few minutes later (but it took almost 5 minutes to get her microphone to work). She paced the stage while a tech scrambled to get things started.
The sound and mix of this show compared to the Webster Hall show was noticeably better. Glass’ vocals could be heard over the pounding bass and Atari sound effects in songs like “Crimewave” and “Air War.” The focus of the set is directly on Glass, even though Kath is responsible for everything other than the vocals.
Glass’ sporadic stage dives and writhing brought the crowd to a frenzy. As Kath pushed his pads to play the twisted bass beat with “The Legend of Zelda”-like sound effects swirling in between, Glass crawled to the back of the stage into the fetal position before diving backwards to her back, screaming the lyrics to the track “xxzxcuzx Me.” A sea of hands reached out for a piece of her as she screamed her ode to robotic love with the lines, “I’m programmed to rust, AIDS robot is clad in iron bolts/Robot grunts have bled each other/They all wanna play with my placenta.”
Even with a short set, having Crystal Castles bring in the New Year was a great way to end 2008, one of the most troubling years of worldwide entropy. With wars all over the sands of its earth and global financial markets collapsing, the elite continue to rape and pillage the middle class and poor through the giant loopholes of capitalism they have created. All of it contributes to the decay of society and continued disintegration of what was once a viable economic system. Kath and Glass brought down the walls of stability and order with their electronic version of musical choas, eradicating what was left of 2008.
