It was unavoidable. In the mid-’90s, dance music was already
beginning to diversify. House, techno, ambient, triphop,
jungle—these prime genres were hybridizing and multiplying. As
their new sounds developed, musicians and fans would analyze and pick
out their most interesting acts. In the style of Simon Reynolds’s
infamous 1999 tome Generation Ecstasy, serious listeners
classified these new sounds into a Byzantine network in order to
complete the portrait of dance music’s development.
Then came “electronica,” the blanket term that pundits, impressed by
the likes of Fatboy Slim and the Chemical Brothers, infamously coined
as the next big thing; the blanket term that allowed dance music to
seep into the mainstream. Fans and critics began to pick which sounds
they liked and dismiss the rest. For me, that process began with the
Crystal Method’s first single, “Now Is the Time.”
First released in late 1994, “Now Is the Time” was cheesy and
overtly commercial. Its shuffling, booming mix of funky bass drums
sounded like two left feet pounding on wood—which may be the
reason why it was branded “big beat.” (A friend once told me that big
beat was for white people who can’t dance.) Unlike the Chemical
Brothers, Scott Kirkland and Ken Jordan’s great big-beat rivals in the
UK, they didn’t offer any bizarre computerized noises, instead relying
on a range of air raid sirens that quickly devolved into interminable
clichés.
Three years later, armed with a major-label contract from Geffen
(which signed the group to its electronica imprint Outpost Recordings),
the Crystal Method released Vegas. For the next couple years,
their prime singles—”Keep Hope Alive,” “Busy Child,” and “Vapor
Trail”—were inescapable, techno standards that appeared in movies
from Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle to Romeo Must
Die to Zoolander. In all likelihood, even your mom’s
heard the Crystal Method.
On September 18, Vegas was reissued as a two-CD deluxe
edition, its arrival forcing me to reconsider what the Crystal Method
accomplished. A decade later, I’m still no fan. But I’ve learned to
respect them.
With Vegas, the Crystal Method painted an undeniably
evocative homage to Las Vegas, their home in the desert. You can hear
the juxtaposition between the urban adult playground they lived in and
the airy, breathtaking vistas that surround it in the way they plant
hard-funk breaks—Clyde Stubblefield’s famous drum licks on James
Brown’s “Funky Drummer” were a prime influence—into a morass of
techno.
Kirkland and Jordan were pranksters who, like then-contemporaries
Coldcut, stuffed their crazy breakbeats with unusual samples. While
ostensibly a tribute to the L.A. rave scene—which at the time
faced constant harassment from the police—”Keep Hope Alive” is
also a play on the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s signature catchphrase. “Busy
Child” uses half a phrase from Eric B. and Rakim’s “Juice (Know the
Ledge),” and reduces Rakim’s “Guess I didn’t know the ledge” to “Guess
I didn’t know.”
But as a pure dance record with no pop numbers, Vegas failed to resolve the problem most electronic artists face: What do you
do when people stop dancing and start listening? Its two vocal
numbers—the only songs here—are interesting; otherwise it’s
all long instrumentals with by-the-numbers buildups, dramatic drum
rolls quickly dropping into fist-pumping choruses. Even in its
newfangled “deluxe” format, Vegas sounds horribly dated to
anyone who went to raves in the late ’90s.
The second disc of remixes from Hyper, Paul Oakenfold, and others
highlights the original album’s superannuated feel as well as its
enduring influence. As producers who are equally at home in the
progressive-house world and the trendy-as-fuck electro-house scene,
Canadian duo MSTRKRFT compress the six-minute “Keep Hope Alive” think
piece into a four-minute slam dance, tightly winding fuzzy guitar
effects around it like barbed wire around a prison fence. If “Keep Hope
Alive” was the Crystal Method’s optimistic take on rock ‘n’ roll and
the L.A. dance scene’s invincibility, then MSTRKRFT approximates
hardcore punk for the cynical Modular set.
So why should anyone care about Vegas? The Crystal Method
never enjoyed critical acclaim, but their music resonated with millions
of people who heard it through car commercials and soundtracks. They
were a brief yet memorable moment for the masses who knew nothing about
rave culture. Today, dance music has risen from a subculture to a
widely respected art form. Inadvertently, the Crystal Method played a
big part in getting it there. 