The Crystal Method interview

There are a number of reasons why The Crystal Method is perhaps the most recognizable name in electronic music over the past decade and a half. While the duo’s studio albums have built a large following within the electronic genre, their cross-genre collaborations over the years have expanded their presence even further, along with their work on everything from movie soundtracks to the original Nike+iPod soundtrack. Having just released their new studio album Divided By Night, I caught up with Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland to talk about Divided By Night and more.

Last I heard you guys were building your own studio so you could make this album, and that was a few years ago. So what took you so long?



Ken: Well two years is actually not bad time for us, you know? (laughs). Up until we got into the new studio we were busy with a lot of other things. We did a soundtrack album, a mix CD, we did a project for Apple and Nike called Drive, and so that kept us pretty busy. And then when we got into the studio we started working for real on the new album.

Divided By Night is a phrase that could apply to a lot of things that have gone on in this decade as far as division and darkness. Is that a worldview statement, or is there something else to the name?

Scott: It was more borne out of this beautiful sunset that we saw flying from one DJ gig to another. We were coming over the city of El Paso at night with the lights on, and above you could see the stars and space and the moon and sort of off on the horizon was this sort of bend of beautiful color and lights that obviously was the sun setting on the west coast. And being from the west, the beauty of it all was something to behold. And then “Divided By Night” just popped into my head. It was more a reflection of there’s my family, my kids, my wife, reflecting on them, you know, probably sitting at the table and eating and sort of wrapping up the day, and here we are at night flying into another city to spend the next four or five hours living this alter ego, these characters of this band that comes in and takes over a club and plays music two or three, and the two different worlds sort of seem to be divided by out late-night personas, if you will. Album titles are difficult. You try not to have, at lease we try not to put too much meaning into them, and kind of feel that that should be left to the consumers or the fans to add their own meaning to that. It does conjure up a bunch of ideas, and I think that’s cool that we can come up with a name that does have little bit of mystery and intrigue behind it.

You guys are no strangers to collaborations over the years, but this album has a ton of guest stars even by your standards. Was that the plan going in, let’s get a bunch of people to work with, or did it just end up happening that way?

Ken: I think it was overall a little bit more of a plan. We wanted to have more song-oriented tracks and a little more vocals. It’s not overwhelmingly more but it is more than we usually have on our albums. A lot of times we’ll try a lot of collaborations and they won’t work out, but only a couple we tried this time didn’t work out, and no one will hear those. But these are the ones that came out really great.

You told me last year that you were really looking forward to working with Peter Hook. You ended up getting him on two tracks on the album. What was the experience like of bringing him into the studio and recording with him?

Ken: It was really great. Some of the collaborations on the album, it was people that had their own studios or people that were not available to Los Angeles, but Peter Hook was in LA for a couple of days. I think it was when he was doing some promotion for the documentary side of the whole Control / Joy Division, you know, the two films that came out. So he was in town and we got him to come by, and he was just a really amazing guy. He was really funny and played well. He’s not afraid to play his signature sound.



The Matisyahu song turned out great. But it’s almost wall to wall vocals and he’s got such a unique identifiable sound. Did you have any thoughts about that when you chose that as the first single, that people are going to think it’s just a Matisyahu single, they’re not going to realize it’s The Crystal Method?

Ken: We still feel like it really feels like a hard-driving Crystal Method track with a lot of electronic elements in it, but yeah, you know, we did pare down the vocals some. But it was going to be our first single, and singles for the most part have vocals. We were pretty comfortable with it.



Scott: Yeah, I had never heard him do a vocal like that. The vocal and the treatment of the vocal and the lyrical direction fit the track really well. Anytime bands that don’t have a lead singer and you use someone that has developed their own sound, you run the risk of that. It was just about putting out a song that we thought sounded good.



You guys have done so many things, soundtracks, collaborations, remixes. What have you not done yet that you still want to do at some point as a Crystal Method project?



Ken: Playing the Super Bowl wouldn’t be bad.



Scott: So many things have happened to us that we’ve been a part of that early on we would have had no idea these thing would have been a possibility. And the reason why that has happened for us is that we’re always in the moment, we’re always sort of focused on where we are at the time.