Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles

(Fiction)

Things are never straightforward when you’re dealing with this Toronto twosome. For a start, the follow-up to their 2008 debut has exactly the same title (causing a whole heap of iTunes bother), and they claim to have recorded the album in a variety of contrasting environments, including an abandoned convenience store in Detroit, a self-built cabin in Ontario and a church in Iceland – not exactly your standard studios, then. Sonically too, they confound as ever; taking their complex noisenik electro to new extremes with thumping beats, unintelligible screeches and shimmering synths. Sadder, more aggressive and infinitely more beautiful still – we didn’t think it was possible.