Thirsty Thursday

Crystal Castles have released an EP and done a handful of remixes for other artists, but it’s on this, their self-titled, first full-length album, that they really come out to shine.

Ethan Kath and Alice Glass make up the Toronto duo named after She-Ra’s home on the classic Saturday morning cartoon “He-Man”. Together, with their keyboard, which supposedly has an Atari sound chip in it, they’ve created another type of 80’s throwback techno you can dance to, though it’s a completely different beast than M83’s “Saturdays=Youth.”

The angry, violent scream of Alice Glass, mixed with what sounds like somebody winning some cheap 80’s arcade game, makes up “Alien Practice”, the first real winner on the album. The sounds of power ups, lasers, and fury somehow make the almost nonsensical lyrics about bodies and scars work wonders.

The hands-down, winner of being the most killer song on the album is “Crimewave”. The lyrics add up to about 1.5 haiku’s worth of words, but it’s not so much what’s being said, as how it’s being said. The dark beats and blippy words, fragmented at times, churn the song into an insanely danceable track that knocks it out of the park.

Whatever skills Crystal Castles picked up from remixing songs for Bloc Party, The Klaxons, Health and many others, they’ve fine-tuned them into an incredibly fun and dance-tacular album that has a lot of crossover potential for the folks who have yet to embrace dance music.

Crystal Castles album is out now on the Last Gang record label and the group, along with a few sweet tracks, can be found on myspace.com/crystal castles. They’re currently making Europe dance, but come this June, they’ll be taking over the U.S. and zapping us all with dance lasers.

Originally published in the St. Cloud Times on 06-03-08.

Click the picture above for the first of three of the “Living as a Zombie American” series that’s up over on funnyordie.com. Has a nice documentary feel, not unlike the confessionals in “The Office”. Very clever spin on racism.

read more | digg story

The series is up on funnyordie.com.

read more | digg story

Sparkle Picnic: Episode #6 includes:

- Beer Licker (What The Fuck Are You Doing?)
- Dick Fell Off (What?)
- Chase Scene (Double Back!)
- Know What I Hate (Every Fucking Month)
- Table Chase (Ah!)
- A Time Machine (No Really, Whatcha Buildin?)
- Lady Boner (…)
- I’ll Kill ‘Em (You Mean, I’ll Kill You)
- No Queer Bullshit (Gather Up All Of Your Tears)
- Ben’s Beard (Yeah? So?)
- Toilet Scare (Boosh!)

Check out sparklepicnic.com.

This is the episode where poor Joel suffered greatly. He banged his knee on some ice while diving in “Tao” and then had to limp around all night and eventually shoot “Chase Scene”. We all suffered on this one, though. It was winter in Minnesota, and filming outdoors is a bitch in low temperatures. “Tao” wasn’t nearly as taxing as “Search Party Animals” (which you have yet to see). We were all miserable during the shoot (it took over an hour), and my jeans kept freezing to the ground.

All in all, though, this episode turned out great. It’s full of some longer bits, but they turned out lovely. My favorite would have to be “Eye Patch”, probably because I wrote and starred in it, but I think there’s a lot of humor in the awfulness of Mr. Eye Patch’s story. I believe “Eye Patch” is the first sketch we were able to use Danny Dikel in, a friend of Ben Herreid’s from Minneapolis that he met in film school. The kid easily surpassed the rest of us in acting and knocked it out of the park in “I’ll Kill Them” and “More Corey Haim”.

I’m also enjoying the use of poor Corey Haim’s name in our sketches. I cringe when people ask me who he is, as it means I’m an old man, and then I tend to launch into the “Have you seen ‘Lost Boys’! Best movie. Ever.” speech from the “Corey Haim Hotline” improv bit we did in episode #2.

Enjoy the show, and we’ll be back next week with another new one.

Love,

Jason

For more? sparklepicnic.com

A few months ago, my friend Jason Sens (who did the logo and flier), made a joke about trying to get Lance Bass to do a sketch for “Sparkle Picnic”. This isn’t quite as far-fetched as it sounds, as the former N’sync’er was up on the campus of SCSU giving a speech/presentation. Obviously this wasn’t something I wanted to do, as I don’t know him and we play some of our characters as gay for laughs (you know Bass is gay, right? It was a huge deal…), but, I really, really liked the idea of guest stars.

In the hopes of scoring a cameo, I immediately went after Nick Whetro from the excellent Madison, WI. band The National Beekeeper’s Society and his solo-act iCARUS HiMSELF. I’d been in touch with him to help set-up a performance for iCARUS HiMSELF on KVSC’s Monday Night Live program and had offered him my click-clack couch to sleep on while he was in town. I pitched him the idea, assured him we could go to the bars for fun afterward, and he was game.

“The Stranger” stems from the mild anxiety of having a complete stranger sleep in your home. In theory, it’ll be fine, maybe fun, but there’s always the possibility that they’re mentally unwell and you’re trapped with them. So that was the beginning of the concept, and it gave way to the sketch that Whetro was kind enough to star in. For something that we shot in 20 minutes, with zero rehearsals, I think it turned out splendidly.

As for the rest, you get the first appearance of the robots, starring Calvin Mckaskil and Jennifer Iacarella, two newcomers to the Sparkle gang. The guys who played our “Ninja Warrior” contestants back in episode one, play an odd duo of jerks, one of whom is having a stroke. Iacarella also wrote the job interview sketch in which she stars alongside our new secret weapon, Steve Johnson. And then Iacarella also comes in at the end with a love story (plus a twist!).

To hear some tunes by The National Beekeeper’s Society and iCARUS HiMSELF:

http://www.myspace.com/nationalbeekeeperssociety

http://www.myspace.com/icarushimself

If you’d like to download free, high-quality versions of the episodes of “Sparkle Picnic” (and really, why wouldn’t you?), do a search for us on iTUNES or else here’s the RSS feed: http://sparklepicnic.blip.tv/rss/itunes

Sparkle Picnic: Episode #9 includes:

- Classification: Superhero (Holy Shit!)
- Mom Virus (Stop Watching Computer Thrillers)
- Search Party Animals (Worse Party Theme Ever)
- Difficulty of Child Actors (Why Isn’t This Baby Crying?)
- Recurring Dream (Have To Get This Off My Chest)

For more? Go to http://www.sparklepicnic.com

Sparkle Picnic: Episode #10 includes:

- Speedboat Test (Really Thinks He’s An Expert)
- Google It (Google Something For Me)
- Got High, Became a Mormon (Have You Heard About Joseph Smith?)
- What Did You Do Last Night? (321,895,981,920 MPH)
- Speedboat Test (Took My Test At Lunch)