The Crystal Method On Tour…

THE CRYSTAL METHOD, pioneers of Electronic Dance Music, are back in the country and are on tour with a show stacked with bangers – Name of the Game, Busy Child, Trip Like I Do, Born Too Slow, Keep Hope Alive plus heaps more! THE CRYSTAL METHOD raised electronic music to a new stellar level of excellence. They are recognized as a pioneering force in the Big Beat genre and Electronica movement, alongside The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, and The Prodigy. They transformed electronic music, taking it from the warehouses and bringing it to some of the largest festival fields across the globe! Scot Kirkland talks to Hi Fi Way about the tour.

Great that you’re back for another Australian tour, you must have really enjoyed it so much last time to be back sooner?
Yeah. I did. I, I enjoyed it a great deal and super stoked to be coming back down there.

Touring in our summer as well is a bonus as well?
It’s not too bad here, but anytime I get a chance to come down there, I greatly appreciate it. It’s been way too long prior to my last visit to the previous visit. I think it had to be at least five or six, maybe even seven years. I thoroughly enjoyed myself this time last year and felt very welcome. The crowds were fantastic and just really appreciated the opportunity. So, when I was invited back, I, I jumped at it.

Are you focusing on a particular album on this tour?
Yeah, I will definitely be focusing on the first few albums, always crowd pleasers when you drop stuff from Vegas, Tweekend and Legion of Boom, definitely be dropping on a lot of stuff from my new album and some remixes I’ve done recently. It’s definitely a hits tour with fresh versions of things, recognisable, but with a fresh take on them. I always leave my sets open to follow the energy in the room and if somebody calls out something, I have a couple options to make a someone’s request come true. The energy of the crowds and everything I took from last December has really energised and really ended the year in a pretty spectacular way. So being some of the first shows I’m doing in 2024, I’m very much looking for the same effect and to propel me into the new year and kick everything off with some good fun and good times.

Last time when I spoke to you this time last year, I asked you whether it was an adjustment since Ken retired. Do you feel confident now that you’ve forged your own path?
Those first few years, I was trying to not only get past not having someone as vital to the operation as Ken in the room with me, but just to be able to come up with a sound and feel comfortable moving forward as the Crystal Method and extending the TCM legacy and moving that forward. The Trip Home was very much a concept album of it being a soundtrack to a movie that maybe existed in between Vegas and Tweekend, getting back into the studio and hooking up a lot of the analogue gear and putting things together in that old school out of the box sort of fashion and then taking everything in in that sort of direction.

With the release of The Trip Out and some of the other collaborations that I’ve been able to do and really feeling that I’ve been able to take what Ken and I did for those first twenty plus years and move forward and still pay tribute to what our sound is and what we’re about. It’s very rewarding when you talk to somebody that knows the band and they hear something new and they could tell that it was a new TCM track because it has your sound, so it’s always what you’re going for. You always want to make music that reflects where you’ve come from, but also takes things in a new direction.

I’m really proud of the direction I’ve been able to take the band since Ken’s departure, but definitely miss him and always will appreciate what we were able to do together. I actually just saw him a few months back. His wife put together a surprise birthday party in Costa Rica, so a bunch of friends went down there and celebrated his sixtieth with him. It was quite a surprise and was a great deal of fun.

Does Ken miss it or has he moved on with life?
I think that he’s really happy with where, what he’s been able to do down there in Costa Rica. He is very comfortable with his decision and the life he has made with his wife down there for themselves. I think he still enjoys music and still does some DJ dates on his own every once in a while, but for the most part he seems pretty happy to have made the decision and moved on. I know it wasn’t an easy one for him to do, and I think that it was something that he had been thinking about for a long time. I could tell when he first told me back in the end of 2015 that he was making the decision to retire. I could tell at that moment that he was really confident that he was making the right choice and comfortable with the choice that he made.

Are you still amazed with the legacy of, you know, that that’s being built with particularly your first album in Vegas? It must also be humbling to see the generational shift in the fan base as well?
I’m continuing to find at my shows that there are fans that have either picked it up from a family friend or grown up with it in their home or discovering for it for the first time. To have them attend shows maybe with those family friends or their parents or coming there for the first time it’s always great to see that our music, whether it was Vegas or Tweekend or Legion Of Boom or any of the ones that we’ve released over the years have found their way into the next generation and there’s interest for what we’ve done and the music we’ve been able to make.

It’s quite remarkable that especially Vegas, that that the two of us, just twirling away in our own little studio that we built up in a two car garage in a suburb of Los Angeles. The fact that we were able to create something that has lasted and been enjoyed for this many years is quite something. Something that Ken and I have been able to share together is pretty remarkable.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch The Crystal Method on the following dates, tickets from Metropolis Touring…