Crystal Castles by Crystal Castles

Crystal Castles is the debut studio album by Canadian electronic music duo Crystal Castles; at the time of its release, the group consisted of producer Ethan Kath and singer Alice Glass. The two met each other in 2004 and both had an interest in noise music acts like AIDS Wolf. This inspired the two to start a project that made noise music, but instead of guitars, they would using electronic sounds made with a circuit-bent Atari 5200, which led multiple journalists to describe their genre of music as a chiptune style they did not intend it to be categorized as. Crystal Castles is a compilation of sold-out singles that made the duo famous internationally, as well as unreleased demos recorded in 2004 and three new cuts produced for the album: "Untrust Us, "Courtship Dating," and "Tell Me What to Swallow." The content on the LP includes samples of tracks from acts such as Death from Above 1979, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Luciano Berio, Drinking Electricity, and Van She. Some professional music journalists highlighted its random and unpredictable nature as well as its unique style and sound. Crystal Castles was released on March 18, 2008, by Lies Records and Last Gang Records, and sold well enough in the United States to make its way onto Billboard such as Independent Albums, Top Dance/Electronic Albums, and Top Heatseekers. It also charted in Australia, France, Ireland, Scotland and the United Kingdom. Many professional critics had complimentary opinions towards the album, one writer for Delusions of Adequacy calling it "one of the best electronic albums of the year." The record ranked in the top 20 on numerous year-end lists by publications such as Pitchfork, NME, and PopMatters and landed on lists of the best albums of the 2000s by NME and Complex. In 2013, Crystal Castles was number 477 on NME's list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time."