CRYSTAL CASTLES – Electric Ballroom, 18/09/08.

Andy Warhol once said that art is what you can get away with. Sure, the art of shoving a grenade up an Atari’s disk drive and recording its death-rattle might seem unadorned but it is precisely this brand of punk simplicity that has allowed Crystal Castles to amass legions of converts on both sides of the Atlantic since ‘Alice Practise’ skipped daintily onto MySpace in 2005. As anticipation slowly fills the room and builds to fever pitch, this pair of scuzz-funk bags o’ doom sashay onto the stage with more louche confidence than a peacock on ketamin, launching into their Ramones-trapped-inside-a-Sinclair C5 sound with a breathless vigour that comes packing more hooks than an abattoir. This isn’t anything new, Crystal Castles have continued to hurdle expectation like a meth-fed spring lamb for months now, haven risen from the Toronto club scene to cusp of greatness in the space of a few short years – newie set opener ‘Exoskeleton’ hinting that they might just be more than one trick ponies.

Alice and Ethan, bolstered by the power of a live drummer, tear through their set like they’ve got both feet nailed to the accelerator, creating a thrilling cacophony that’s akin to stapling an 8-bit console to your head and diving headfirst into a threshing machine. The bass feels as if you have a large bid trapped within your ribcage, beating itself to death and from the off, the crowd respond by going inevitably batshit. Barely pausing for breath, the band unleash ‘Baptism’ and ‘Crimewave’, the latter a digi-funk powerhouse that can’t fail to leave those with even a glimmer of a trouser pulse spasming in sexual glory. It sounds like a disgruntled 8-bit console grew legs and jitterbugged around the room before kicking Mario down a liftshaft.

Undoubtedly, Crystal Castles are the gloriously schizophrenic sound of 2008. Their music contains both a riotous punk fury as well as a full quota of sonorant pop hooks: theirs is a sound that’ll bite off both your ears but, as you collapse in a pile of your own blood and terror, stick around to whisper soothing platitudes and tenderly stroke your hair until the ambulance arrives. ‘Alice Practise’ and ‘Air War’ tear along like a brakeless train colliding into a warehouse full of defunct Gameboys until ‘Courtship Dating’ arrives in a blaze of arcade nihilism. A song so good that Timbaland lifted it wholesale for Fiddy Cent’s lamentable ‘Ayo Technology’, it has grown into veritable planet-leveller from months on the road, a snarling beast that picks you up by your hair and throws you across the room, before ‘Black Panther’ and ‘Yes No’ drag you outside and you wake up bloodied and confused in a ditch half a mile down the road. With bitemarks and everything.