The Crystal Method: Ten Years and 275 Miles from Vegas

by Liz Ohanesian

It was ten years, almost to the day, of the release of the Crystal Method's debut album, Vegas, when I spoke with Scott Kirkland by phone. Two weeks later, the duo's definitive effort would be reissued as a deluxe edition, completely remastered and with a bonus disc of remixed tracks.

Vegas came out in 1997, part of an onslaught of high-impact dance albums that were released that year, including the Prodigy's The Fat of the Land and Chemical Brothers' Dig Your Own Hole. Those with the power of the pen called the new sound "big beat," a slightly altered version of the techno and acid house tracks that had been driving raves since the end of the previous decade.  The sound of 1997 was large, seemingly cut specifically for the purpose of fueling tens of thousands of sweaty college kids convening somewhere in the middle of the desert.  Songs would expand and collapse back into themselves like baby universes.  Synth lines would warp minds, as if to force dancers to question what they smoked.  To hear something like "Busy Child," from Vegas, on the radio was some kind of sign that grunge's storm clouds were lifting.  The commercial success of the movement may have been short-lived, but the sound would go on to impact artists for the decade that followed.

"A few years later, we were able to have some perspective on [Vegas] and talk to people, where the album did have an effect on them and it sort of captured a particular time in everyone's life," Kirkland acknowledges.  He characterizes the era as a time when war and terrorism didn't hang over daily life in the U.S. "A lot of people, they were at the end of high school or in their college years or just out of college and…those were the albums that people listened to when they went out and, at that time in your life, those were really fun years."

For Kirkland and partner Ken Jordan, the Crystal Method began years before Vegas was unleashed upon the nation.  Jordan, a former DJ at UNLV's college radio station, had moved to Los Angeles in 1989 to take a job working for a producer.  Kirkland would often come in from Las Vegas to work on music with Jordan.

"When I came out, he said, 'You gotta go to these clubs, there are these clubs that they just throw together in warehouses.  It's all illegal and there's great music and all these DJs,'" Kirkland recalls.  Rave had just hit Los Angeles with DJs like Doc Martin and Marques Wyatt driving the underground to ecstatic shrieks.

Kirkland followed Jordan to L.A. in 1990. The duo found a house with a studio already installed, moved in and worked on the music. Meanwhile, they embraced all that L.A. had to offer—techno filtered through the airwaves of now-defunct radio station MARS-FM 103.1 and parties at the sprawling downtown hotel Park Plaza. The Crystal Method played its first live date roughly four years later, opening for a British act then known as the Dust Brothers (later Chemical Brothers).

The two played across the country, racking up gigs in Florida, Massachusetts and New York.  Back in their adopted home state, Kirkland and Jordan were more likely to be found playing San Diego and San Francisco than Los Angeles.  Kirkland recalls that quite a bit of time had passed between that first L.A. gig and the duo's live return to the city.  The Crystal Method reemerged at Magic Wednesdays, the weekly rave-styled party held in the space now known as the Ruby on Hollywood Boulevard.

"That show at Magic Wednesdays was a big thing because it was a sort of homecoming in many ways," says Kirkland.  "Really packed as well."

At the time of the Magic Wednesdays show, the Crystal Method had inked a deal with Outpost, a label that had Geffen affiliations, and was putting together a full-length release featuring new material and a few reworked pieces.

"High Roller" was one of the album's oldest numbers and was created specifically for a gig at a club in Orlando, Florida.  "We wanted to create something downtempo that would sort of cleanse the room of all that had happened before," Kirkland explains of the song's origins.  Other tracks, like "Trip like I Do" and "Vapor Trail" had also been part of the duo's repertoire in some form before the making of the album, but the bulk of the content was created between the end of 1996 and the middle of 1997.

Since Vegas, the duo has released four studio albums, two mixed CDs and numerous remixes and soundtrack contributions.  However, in Los Angeles, the Crystal Method is currently recognizable for its Friday night show on Indie 103.1 FM.  Taking its name from the group's mixed CDs, Community Service finds Kirkland and Jordan (and, occasionally, Robtronik from L.A.'s Compression parties) spinning the latest dance tracks from 10 p.m. until midnight.  Working in radio has clearly given the duo a new perspective on electronic music.

"There's always going to be an ebb and flow to any particular scene," says Kirkland.  "I think that has happened with electronic music.  For a few years, it needed some fresh energy and fresh life.  I think that, over the past few years, there has been that sort of injection of really great music."

Reflecting on his past, Kirkland adds, "Bands like us and Fatboy Slim and Prodigy and Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk continue to make music and forge ahead and create something interesting…and, hopefully, inspire some really talented artists to inject new life into the scene and move forward."