Mashing The Keypad

Crystal Castles
Crystal Castles
Last Gang, 2008
4 stars

Listening to this album evokes some strange mental pictures. As I write this I'm imagining a dank, sweaty underworld gymnasium, with Mario and Luigi bench-pressing Koopa Troopas in tandem, Sonic the Hedgehog pounding the treadmill and Donkey Kong studying himself in a mirror as he performs stomach crunches over a wooden barrel. The video games references here are endless - Crystal Castles (come on, Crystal Castles, anyone?) fashion menacing, low-res electro out of skewed vocals, old video game sound effects and bent casio beats. It's been done before, but rarely this well - think Hot Chip but with the dark, abraisive slant of The Knife's Silent Shout.

Artwork: A

Published in mX, Thursday April 3, 2008.