All rubbishy pop music is released on a Monday and isn’t very exciting. However Thursdays on hecklerspray is Trawl day, and full of good music! Hooray! Although we have to literally sift through all of the rubbish to bring you the goods. Boo!

If it wasn’t boring enough to click through various MySpace pages, people are sending an ever-increasing amount of messages to our inbox telling us they're the shit. We don’t have the heart to them that they are just shit. Today, we are going to introduce to Crystal Castles who are an '8-bit terror duo' who come from Toronto, Canada. Yeah, Canada! The country does produce other music acts apart from Celine Dion and Bryan Adams. And the difference between Crystal Castles and their fellow Canadian counterparts is that they're actually good.  

Yes, we know what you’re thinking – “What the fuck is 8-bit terror?” Well, to be quite honest, we aren’t quite sure on that one either. But we will try to offer some sort of explanation. 8-bit is verging on geeky computer stuff as it’s all to do with computer microprocessors and other dull things. They were used in very early computers in the 70s and the 80s. Tweaking with these chips can produce various sounds as heard in different computer games. That’s more or less what Crystal Castles have done, taken various 8-bit sounds and made records out of them. Though if anyone can make it a bit clearer to us, feel free to explain it and make us feel less stupid. 

Crystal Castles are a duo simply called known as Alice and Ethan. They are part of an ever-growing genre being nicknamed Bitpop or Chiptunes. Combining early video game sounds with modern day instruments and vocals, the scene – if you can call it that – is definitely one of the most innovative and creative going. Slowly, the band have built themselves a reputation as they have been responsible for remixing a series of high-profile bands such as Good Shoes, Bloc Party and the band who are as ravey as gravy, Klaxons.  

However, what makes this act slightly different from others that we’ve covered is that they were discovered by accident. And, some of their songs were made by mistake. In an interview from last year, they admit that they were simply messing around with various sounds and put the results on the internet for people to download. The dream scenario then happened when various record companies asked to release their music. Again, the internet generation proves that anyone can make it big. 

So with a band that was created by accident, what else randomly happened? Well the track Alice Practise that is up for listening on their page is just that. Band member Alice was unaware she being recorded as she sung a few words. Add some fierce synths underneath and it makes the kind of sounds that you’ll hear down the arcade. Various pings and pops echo throughout the short duration of the track like a soundtrack to an amusement park. It’s more common for hip-hop to sing about sex and anything connected to the female kind. So, its different to here a simple lyric of “I want short breasts” being echoed throughout. And it’s being sung by a woman! So any uptight feminists out there can’t get all pissy about this being yet another song that is degrading to women. Hecklerspray loves the female body and is all up for women celebrating themselves. We are quite happy to do this with you too. 

Five tracks have been placed on the internet for you to listen to whilst you pretend to get that all important report done. Lots of tour dates have been announced by the duo and they are set to play the most corporate festival of the year. Yes, the Leeds and Reading will host the band over their respective days so lots of confused rock kids can try and work out how to dance to them while drinking their watered-down lager in a yummy plastic glass. 

Read more: 

Crystal Castles MySpace page