Getting technical: Electronic music masters Crystal Method returning to Vegas

Kirk Baird

Friday, Aug. 10, 2001 | 9:12 a.m.

Fast Facts

What: Crystal Method, Uberzone and Static Avenger. When: 7 p.m. Wednesday. Where: House of Blues at Mandalay Bay. Tickets: $28, $33. Information: 632-7600.

In 1990 Scott Kirkland, then 20, left Las Vegas to join his friend and fellow musician/DJ Ken Jordan in Los Angeles.

Jordan was born and raised in Las Vegas. Kirklands family moved to the city when he was 6 months old.

The two met in 1988. Kirkland graduated from Las Vegas High School and was a DJ at various clubs around town, while Jordan was the program director at UNLVs radio station, KUNV 91.5-FM.

They both had samplers (a recording device used by musicians and DJs) and were fans of electronic music bands such as New Order and Depeche Mode. They even did some early recording sessions together with a female vocalist.

But there were opportunities on the L.A. music and club scene that Las Vegas couldn't offer. In the late '80s Las Vegas was still growing and its club scene still in the infantile stage.

L.A., on the other hand, had made a full recovery from the disco days, with raves becoming increasingly popular and less underground.

Shortly after moving to L.A. in 1989 Jordan landed a job as an assistant music producer working with such artists as Edie Brickell and Michael Penn, among others and Kirkland followed.

"It wasnt like, 'Man, we're not getting anywhere in this town, we gotta pack up our bags and go.' It was just an opportunity came up and we just followed it," Kirkland said in a recent phone interview from Vancouver, British Columbia.

The duo began collaborating again, calling themselves the Crystal Method, and stand as some of Las Vegas biggest musical exports. The group performs Wednesday at House of Blues at Mandalay Bay.

Before the success, however, the band was limited mainly to gigs in the L.A. club scene -- although they would return to Las Vegas to play Club Utopia when they could.

But a single, "Keep Hope Alive," on an independent label was noticed by fellow electronic outfit, the Chemical Brothers, who were enjoying tremendous success in their native England as well as the rest of Europe. The attention from the Chemical Brothers, who began incorporating "Keep Hope Alive" into their shows, brought the Crystal Method some overseas recognition.

Crystal persuasion

The house-techno-ambient evolution, which one major music magazine called the future of rock music, was in full swing by '96 when the Crystal Method signed a contract with Geffen Records' Outpost Recordings.

The duo released its first full-length record, "Vegas," a year later. In the Rolling Stone review of "Vegas," the magazine dubbed the band the "United States' Great White Hope in the techno sweepstakes," in a nod not only to the band's promise and increasing popularity, but also that it was time that America be fully acknowledged in the Euro-dominated electronica music scene.

This eventually led to across-the-Atlantic comparisons for the group, namely that the Crystal Method is somehow America's answer to the Chemical Brothers. To this day Kirkland said that is probably the biggest misconception about his band.

"(The comparison) was something some journalist wrote a long time ago and everybody seemed to pick up on it," he said. "It's an honor to be mentioned with a great band like the Chemical Brothers, they're heroes of ours, and heroes of many, many other bands that make music in our genre. But just because we both make music with breakbeat in it, and it's both two guys with single syllable names -- it seems like we've been tied to them.

"It's something I wish that would go away."

It hasn't, but in 1998 a song from "Vegas" -- "Busy Child" -- after appearing on the "Lost in Space" soundtrack, helped create an identity for the Crystal Method beyond comparisons to other bands.

With its repeated sampling of the phrase "Get busy, child" and futuristic grooves, "Busy Child" was featured prominently in commercials for the movie and may be the song most non-Crystal Method fans would identify with the band.

That's not saying much. The Crystal Method is a new breed of band -- namely comprised of DJs -- where recognition of the songs come first, followed by the group's name, and finally the individual members.

The anonymity, however, doesn't bother Kirkland.

"There's nothing, really, you can do about that," he said. "We've always just been about promoting our music and not ourselves. It's not like, say, Marilyn Manson, (who) to a lot of people they may be able to relate to the name but they won't be able to relate to a song or music (of his) they've heard.

"It's the opposite of us. You start to mention our music (to non-fans) and songs we've done and it's, 'Oh yeah, yeah, I remember them.' But the name doesn't stick with them. I think making the music in our minds is more important to us than some sort of shock value with our name or getting popular individually."

Record fans

The Crystal Method's new album, "Tweekend," the band's second effort, may provide the group the mainstream popularity it's missed so far. An amalgam of funky rhythm, ambient swirls, pulsing backbeat and hard-edged rock, the disc is, as Kirkland described, "darker and heavier" than anything the duo's recorded before.

"I definitely think it's a more mature Crystal Method album," he said.

It's also very accessible -- and not just to the club crowd. For example, the soon-to-be-a-single "Murder," features Stone Temple Pilots' Scott Weiland on vocals and guitar.

"My uncle Charlie, who's eight years older than me, when I played that song for him over the Christmas holiday, he just gravitated toward that one," Kirkland said. "And he is a hardcore rock guy."

Further rock 'n' roll influences can be found on "Tweekend" as well, especially the four tracks on which Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello played on and/or co-produced.

"One thing we're not afraid of is expressing our rock background," said Kirkland, who, at one point in the early '80s, took guitar lessons from fellow Las Vegan Mark Slaughter of metal band Slaughter.

"(This) turns a lot of electronic people upside down. To a lot of electronic people, the rock world is the antichrist. It's like the thing that electronic (music) society should steer away from," he said. "But it's such a ridiculous concept."

Kirkland blames that close-minded mentality on the failure of electronic music to live up to some expectations as the "future of music." Ironically, it was the same narrow-mindedness that rock music displayed -- an inability to expand -- that made electronica more popular, he said.

"We've never been purely techno or purely breakbeat -- we've always been part of a movement that is just making music that we're into and we like," Kirkland said. "We'll always continue to do that and to try and reach a different audience."

Still, even he acknowledged there are limitations to the band's across-the-board popularity.

"I remember when Slaughter came back to (Las Vegas) a while back, in '90 or '91, they were given the key to the city," Kirkland said. "I don't know if we'll be given the key to the city when we come back. But we'll be more than happy to accept anything the city is willing to offer us -- except a night in the Clark County (jail)."

Kirk Baird is an Accent feature writer. Reach him at 259-8801 or kirk@ lasvegassun.com.

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