Crystal Castles - The Roundhouse, London 15/10/10

There’s something about the Camden’s Roundhouse that makes any gig feel like you’re about to attend a historical event. Maybe its the act of ascending those endless stairs and entering that huge colosseum like arena.

Soon after the brilliant HEALTH end their support slot Crystal Castles, that’s Alice Glass and Ethan Kath (and a live drummer), hit the stage and begin their feral electronica.

Each song is more thunderous and more abrasive than the last. Sounds such as ‘Baptism’ and ‘Crimewave’ hit everyone in the room with neither subtlety nor apology. The lights are blinding and the music is deafening, it’s an assault on both the senses and conventional ideas of what a live show should be; you can barely even see the band past the lights.

For some it’s easy to become lost in the shear pretense of it all and to wonder what on earth their point is, the excitement in the air is only infectious if you’re willing to tear yourself away from this naive idea that art should mean something.

On the rare occasion that Crystal Castles’ music attempts to encode any thought or feeling (look at recent single ‘Celestica’) it’s so fleeting that it feels as if they’re trying to convince even themselves that they are something as opposed to nothing. Soon enough it falls back into the same vacuous drone of sassy white noise coming from Alice and repetitive beats coming from Ethan. It’s their unpredictability that makes them so predictable.

Annoyingly however, in this room, in this part of London, with this crowd, and under those strobe lights they make perfect sense. Look around, the crowd are as riotous as the crowd for any punk or metal band. As Alice runs across the face of a security guard the only thing stopping her being swallowed be the sea of arms and shoulders is the tension of the microphone cable, people treat her like the messiah. At times (fleetingly again) the spectacle along with the deafening sound of it all can make your hair stand on end.

Crystal Castles aren’t trying to convey love or hate here - They aren’t trying to convey anything. Instead they’re just chucking paint at a blank canvass and inviting their audience to do exactly the same. Maybe the only thing cooler than giving a shit is not giving a shit - God, I hate that I understand them.