Remember when electronica was the “next big thing” and was set to change the face of pop music forever? When synthesizers and samplers would wipe guitars and drums off the face of the planet, and the only “band” in town would be a knob-twiddling duo? Ah, the good ol’ days...

Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland remember this all too well. As the Los Angeles-based duo The Crystal Method, they rode the crest of this wave just as the media fascination for all things electronica was at its peak. Vegas, the pair’s 1997 debut on Outpost Recordings, was a hard-edged, tightly-coiled techno masterstroke that sold oodles, thanks to catchy incisions to the brain like the rave anthems “Keep Hope Alive,” “Busy Child,” “High Roller” and “(Can’t You) Trip Like I Do.”

Indeed, Vegas was a perfectly-timed introduction to the masses, and before the ’90s were over, the duo would witness the use of several of their tracks in TV spots and movies, usually as accompaniment to technologically mind-boggling explosions and car chases (hey, it worked). Embarking on a lengthy world tour to promote their debut, the duo built up a zealous, loyal fan base—for instance, as of this writing, there are over 185 (!) mostly euphoric reviews of Vegas on Amazon.com, written by Crystal Meth fans the world over.

Step forward to 2001, where the shifts in the musical landscape have been somewhat less than earth-shattering: guitars and rock idols still run amok, and only one out of every five households in America contains a bedroom MIDI studio (a far cry from the 42.7-percent projected by Congress in 1995). In short, electronica failed to save the music industry, and “faceless” techno acts still compete with the likes of ‘N Sync and Blink 182 for MTV airplay.

On the other hand, the fact that Crystal Method can even play in the same ballpark as ‘N Sync and Blink 182 is perhaps reason for tech-heads to rejoice. Fifteen years ago, a song like “Busy Child” would have remained buried far below the tundra, if not the latest Sting release; now, techno, big-beat, whatever-they’re-calling-it-next-week, is ubiquitous, part of the fabric of pop life. It’s just that some of the pressure on electronic musicians to “revolutionize” the world is off.

And a good thing that, too.

None of which, of course, remotely concerns Jordan or Kirkland. As pop pundits formed absurd hypotheses (see above) about the future of electronic dance music, the duo just forged ahead, carving away at sounds and writing songs in their Bomb Shelter studio in the very non-techno, suburban environment of Glendale, Cal. The result, after four years of cutting, pasting, layering, and treating sounds and beats, is Tweekend (Geffen), a title that will resonate loudly with anyone who’s ever stayed up long into the night adjusting the EQ on a snare sample or searching for the perfect hi-hat pattern. Tweak, tweak, tweak—it’s the blessing and the curse of every electronic musician. As Kirkland recently admitted, “We were almost thinking it was going to take another five years to get [Tweekend] done.”

Thankfully, the group knew when to stop, thus avoiding the trap that many MIDI artists fall into: tweaking the sucker to death. In fact, Tweekend strikes a very fine balance between precise, almost mathematical rhythms and that subtle, ever elusive “human touch.”

Both sonically and song-wise, Tweekend is an improvement over Vegas. For starters, there’s a greater variety of beats, from the bruising hard rock of “PHD” to the James Brown-like funk of “Roll It Up” to the reggae-dancehall feel of “Over the Line.” And though they continue to use vocals sparingly, the track “Murder” features Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland, making it one of the most accessible—dare I say, pretty—things they’ve ever done. Add to that the guest contributions of Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, who plays and co-produces a few cuts (“PHD,” “Wild, Sweet and Cool,” et al.), as well as turntablist DJ Swamp on the album’s first single, “The Name of the Game” (with remixes by Eric Kupper), and it’s clear that the duo is reaching out in ways they wouldn’t (couldn’t?) have four years ago.

Just prior to the worldwide release of their highly anticipated sophomore release, Jordan and Kirkland managed to drag themselves away from their beloved Bomb Shelter studio—no doubt at the behest of their publicist—to talk with DJ Times.

What I Did On My Big Beat Vacation

DJ Times: It’s been four years since the release of Vegas, and I’m just wondering what, if any, changes do you see as having occurred in music in your absence?

Ken Jordan: In music overall, I think the landscape has broadened some, and has also narrowed some. It seems like there’s a lot of different influences in mainstream rock, with a lot of hip hop in there. I think dance music has really influenced a lot of current productions and stuff.

Scott Kirkland: Electronica’s no longer the “next big thing,” which is nice [laughs].

DJ Times: So you’re saying that it’s just infiltrated other areas of music more?

Kirkland: Yeah, I mean, that’s what we always thought it would do way back when everybody was calling it the next big thing. When people asked us the question, “What do you think about the fact that electronica or whatever is the next big thing?” and I remember many times we just—you know, we always just thought it would influence, and continue to become a part of mainstream music in the sense that, you know, it’s never going to take over or anything, but it will just continue to influence artists and develop. And other artists that make electronic music will be influenced by other things around them, and it will just continue to go off on its own in some areas. But, you know, it will never take over. It just doesn’t seem like the radio world or the media are really willing to take that kind of chance, and some of the artists that are making the music don’t really want to become a part of that either.

DJ Times: What sort of changes have you gone through as a band in the last four years?

Kirkland: Umm, I’ve probably gained about 10 pounds [laughs].

DJ Times: Living off the wealth of the first album…

Kirkland: No, no, probably just eating too much.

Jordan: Sitting in the studio, ordering take-out, Flaming Dr. Pepper’s.

Kirkland: That’s been my biggest downfall, Flaming Dr. Pepper’s.

DJ Times: Talk a little bit about your Bomb Shelter studio. Did you build it up much in the intervening time?

Jordan: Yeah, there’s a lot more gear there, but essentially we still work the same way—a few more knobs to turn and buttons to push.

DJ Times: Any particular pieces of gear that have really excited you in the making of this album?

Jordan: Well, I think Nords and E-4 samplers are still kings in our studio.

Kirkland: There’s been a lot of advances in software and hardware, not only in the studio, but for what we can do on the road, you know? This tour we’ll be able to work a lot more toward the next record because basically you have the ability to have a studio in the laptop nowadays. So, basically, we could be sitting on the shitter and working on music! We were flying on the plane on our way out here, and both of us have separate Power Books and we were able to bring ProTools or Digital Performer and actually work on something—with the plug-ins and all that stuff that we’re used to at home in our studio. So, I think it’s just sort of moving forward as far as technology and stuff. Things aren’t easier, but they’re definitely—you have the ability to be more creative and do more things on the road.

Shelter From The Storm: The Studio Life

DJ Times: How would you describe your Bomb Shelter studio to someone who’s never seen it? What kind of atmosphere does it have?

Jordan: Kind of a cold room…

Kirkland: At times claustrophobic.

Jordan: [laughs] We haven’t really done much to make it like a bright, very open space. It’s just sort of a room full of metal and grey and black. What’s worse than that is when you first walk into the house that houses our studio, the whole living room, kitchen area is like the darkest room you’ve ever been in in your life. But then when you make it to the studio, it’s like, oh yeah, this is nice and bright in here!

Kirkland: Yeah, sometimes when you grow comfortable with something, you start to get bored with it. It’s kind of weird, we’ve been in there so long, we’ll probably make a change, either moving it someplace else or drastically changing the environment in that place. But it’s definitely comfortable for our ears. We know what sounds good in there. We’re really, really comfortable with the way that, sonically, things bounce around, and—that’s very reassuring when we go in there ’cause we know essentially how things will translate to the outside world. It is small. It’s basically a two-car garage that we’ve converted into a studio. But you could drive up and down the street and it’d be very difficult to pick out the [house] that had a studio.

DJ Times: No complaints from the neighbors?

Kirkland: No, we have a large freeway about 100 yards behind the house and that provides a nice cover for the different things we do. A semi-truck going by in the morning creates more bass than most things that we could do in the studio. And we have lots of trees and very cool neighbors.

Jordan: Physically, we have it set up in a configuration where you can get to anything or any sound from any other place in the studio. You don’t have to get up and walk anywhere, you just slide over on your chair. So it’s kind of like, an almost enclosed circle. So that makes it a little more intuitive. You don’t really have to work to get to things. You “hear” something you need to do, you just slide over to it.

Everybody’s Working for the Tweekend: Making of the New Album

DJ Times: Tell me a little bit about the title Tweekend.

Jordan: Well, it took us a long time to make the record, and a lot of that was due to being on the road for two-and-a-half years. But the rest of the time it was our sort of production style, which is: get a track going, then just keep adjusting and tweaking and re-tweaking the sound and the mix until we think we’ve got it right. There’s a lot of great things about having your own studio, but one of the built-in problems is that you’re able to keep adjusting and fine-tuning and re-tweaking a track until you think it’s done. So, we know a track’s done when we stop tweaking it, hence the title, and, of course, the gratuitous drug reference thrown in to it!

DJ Times: Do you take demos to the club to spin? And what kind of feedback did you get on some of the new stuff?

Jordan: Well, we played a couple of the tracks—“Ten Miles Back” and “Wild, Sweet and Cool.” We played real early versions of those tracks the last couple times we’ve gone out. And other tracks, we just try them on different sound systems, club-like systems, car systems, all that. We didn’t press any acetates; we were coming down to the wire with this one, and we just didn’t have any time to do it. We do always play tracks in different listening environments, make sure it works everywhere.

DJ Times: Scott Weiland appears on Tweekend. How did that come about?

Jordan: Two, three years ago we were doing some radio festival in the Midwest—an outdoor summer festival with a bunch of bands, and Scott Weiland was actually touring and promoting his solo album at the time. So he was playing that show, and we were playing last. And we finished our show and someone from our crew was like, “Hey, Scott Weiland tried to get up on stage with you.” He had this song all prepared to sing over “Keep Hope Alive,” I think…

Kirkland: We just thought it was so crazy we had to go talk to him about it! [laughs]

Jordan: So we talked to him afterwards about doing a future collaboration, and eventually we hooked up briefly and worked on “Murder.”

DJ Times: One thing that kind of occurred to me while listening to Tweekend—it’s kind of an odd thing to say, but it almost has a bit of a “classic” techno sound, and I’m wondering if you agree with that and if there is even such a thing?

Kirkland: Describe what you mean…

DJ Times: Just in the sense that techno and electronic music now does have a fairly long history behind it, and your sound seems to encapsulate a lot of what has happened in the last 10 years. It’s just got a very identifiable sound—this is a really electronic-based record. Is there such a thing as a classic techno sound now?

Jordan: A lot of that is just however you define those labels that people put on music. But one thing we’ve always tried to do is make music that doesn’t really date itself over time. We’re not gonna be doing 2-step or anything like that. So we want to have something that sounds as current when we first do it and five, 10 years later.

Kirkland: Yeah, we try not to follow the latest trend as far as genre. There seems to be a constant flow of, you know, what’s hot? 2-step? Whatever—some kind of house-garage sound, or drum-n-bass. We love a lot of different types of music, but we don’t try to go in with, “What’s the new hot track here? Let’s listen to that and let’s try to do that.” We are as influenced now by current artists as we are by some of our favorite artists growing up. We also try to make songs that can be listened to in any environment, that somebody could listen to in their car, or on their headphones, or driving or whatever. Not being nailed down to a dancefloor or a club.

DJ Times: Although your sound has a very hard edge and it has a little bit of “darkness” in some of the sounds and in the beats, it still does have a full-bodied, warm quality to it.

Jordan: That’s what we’re going for. We’re going for music that sounds like, even though it’s obvious we’re using technology and computers and samplers and synthesizers, we always go for that organic, sort of man-made feel, like some humans actually played it. And we call up lots of things—distortion pedals, tape saturation, tube saturation, all different things. But it’s not so much we’re using those things because we heard it might be a good thing, but we recognize the sound. It’s what we like. I think our sound will progress over the years, and has progressed on this album, but at the same time it’s always gonna sound like the Crystal Method.

DJ Times: Some of your songs—and some songs by your contemporaries—have popped up in movie soundtracks and commercials in the last few years and usually in action-based sequences. Why do you think electronic music, and your own music in particular, is so suited to those different areas?

Kirkland: Well, I think a lot of it is that it has a lot of movement, and a lot of force behind it. I recently was watching that Romeo Must Die movie, and one of our tracks [“High Roller”] is in that. And I hadn’t gone to see the movie in theaters, and we just heard that they wanted to license it. And the way they cut a lot of those scenes, with cars going down the street, things happening, explosions even, lots of quick action—it works with something that’s very rhythmic and has that sort of force behind it. That sequence—when you think about what else would be good there…Bryan Adams probably wouldn’t really…I mean, hip hop has a lot of that, too. And another thing is a feeling that to a lot of directors and producers, electronic music really doesn’t have words that can compete or confuse the plot. So that track just has a couple little samples from NASA or whatever, and even if they don’t go with it, they don’t confuse it.

Boys With Toys: Tools & Techniques

DJ Times: Do you generally create your samples from scratch? Or do you mess around with stuff that you’ve taken from records?

Kirkland: Sometimes we’ll just find something on something and we’ll keep it exactly as it is, whether it’s a sample CD or a record—sometimes you’ll come across something that just sounds right, and it works, so you don’t really need to change it much. But most of the time we tend to dissect samples and loops and bass lines and move things around, and shift the timing and the feel of things. Lots of the synthetic sounds, whether it’s the synths or bass lines or those little bits and pieces that create atmosphere—those tend to come from things we’ve played on various synths and effects that we have.

DJ Times: What’s your sampler of choice, and why?

Jordan: Definitely the E-4.

Kirkland: Yeah, the E-4X. I’ve been using E-MUs since graduating from high school way back when. My mom got me an EMAX-2.

Jordan: I started with the Mirage. But the Ensoniq samplers were such crap that I eventually had to migrate over to the E-MU world.

Kirkland: Who eventually migrated? They became one company anyhow! E-MU started out as a proper duplicate or representation of whatever it was you were sampling. And EPS, when they started out, they knew that they were going to put together a much lower-end sampler, 8-bit or 12-bit, that degraded the sound in such a way that sometimes made it actually sound better. Some of the orchestra hits or strings—it gives it a texture, or adds a different edge to it. So there’s something to be said about low-end technology. Actually, I think the first sampler I really had was the RZ-1…I don’t know what the hell I did with that…

DJ Times: The RZ-1?

Jordan: Was that a Casio?

Kirkland: Yeah.

DJ Times: Not the FZ-1…

Kirkland: That was the one that came out later.

Jordan: The RZ-1 was a drum machine one. Man, that had the worst sampler of all time.

Kirkland: [Laughs] Yeah, that came with a cassette full of samples, and you could sample snares or basses off this really noisy cassette!

DJ Times: I’ve seen your gear list online, and it looks like there’s a fair share of analog gear. What are some of your favorites?

Jordan: Well, the Jupiter 6…

DJ Times: What do you like about that one?

Jordan: Pretty much everything about that.

Kirkland: It’s a really analog thing that has lots of knobs and lots of different ways you can manipulate the sound on the fly. And I really have no idea why Roland went away from that. One of the first synthesizers I had was a D-50, which came way after the Jupiter, or two or three years anyway, which went more into the linear synthesis. You know, page after page of backward-ass programming. It took you absolutely nowhere, and it really cut down on the creative relationship between the person and their synth. Jordan: As far as new analog, we use that Future Retro 777. What else are we using? We still use the SH-101, the ARP Odyssey…

Kirkland: We’ve got a Korg Mono/Poly…we’ve had a Memory Moog for quite some time, but we really haven’t sat down with that and conquered that.

Jordan: Oh, and the Yamaha CS-40 we use quite a bit.

Kirkland: Yeah, the CS-40. And we have a CS-80, which was quite a find. It doesn’t have MIDI or anything. We have a great collection of old pedals, and the Harp Bass, the Electro-Harmonix stuff, and some Ring Mods and different things like that.

DJ Times: What about the recording and sequencing?

Jordan: We use ProTools.

DJ Times: Did you do the first album on ProTools also?

Kirkland: Yeah. We definitely didn’t have the Mix-Plus system.

Jordan: It was mostly Project.

Kirkland: Yeah, 16-bit. And we used Digital Performer for our sequencing.

Jordan: Yeah, I think we were maxed out at eight voices for most of the first record. We’d do live MIDI mixes, and then very few—three or four—audio tracks. Those kind of mixes you can never ever, ever re-create, no matter how hard you try.

DJ Times: Has ProTools revolutionized the recording industry?

Jordan: Well, there’s probably been 100 times—more than 100 times—while we were making this album that we’ve had to recall mixes, and it comes up exactly right. You don’t notice it at the time, but it just saves you.

Kirkland: Yeah, you do remember the many times that when you try to recall something and it’s not there! There were a few times when we just had to move forward, and sometimes you’d come up with something better. But it was very frustrating knowing that you might not ever get back to the exact sound [that you’re working with]. We’ve sort of developed along with the technology, and it’s like, we’ll be telling our grandkids…the way your grandfather would tell you…

Jordan: He had to walk through the snow! [laughs]

Kirkland: Yeah, and [affects old man’s voice] “I used to have to sample in 8-bit! I used to have to sequence on a box that was 10 times bigger than that thing you’re sequencing on now!” The most amazing thing is storage, and the advances with that. We used to have to save to 44 meg cartridges, those big, bulky Syquest cartridges… Jordan: Yeah, they held 44 meg. Same thing would handle 50 gig now.

Kirkland: And more RAM. To have a gig of RAM on your computer, there’s really nothing you can’t do. You’re not limited by the number of tracks you can have in a sequence.

Crystal Methodology

DJ Times: You guys have a strong reputation among other musicians for the way you program your beats. Can you walk me through a step-by-step process of how you construct a beat?

Jordan: I think the key to beat construction, and the thing that eludes a lot of people, and they don’t take the time to put into it, is just the sounds that make up the beat. I mean, you’ve gotta look far and wide. You’ve gotta have a collection of the greatest kick drums you’ve ever heard in your life, and a collection of the greatest snares and hi-hats. We still only have about four crash cymbals we really like. And we have a lot of them.

Kirkland: I think beats and stuff are just…the simplest things are sometimes the greatest-sounding things. Looking back on how the record came together, sometimes we spent a lot of time on beats, sometimes it just happened really quickly. I don’t know if we’re true pioneers of beats, but we just appreciate what good drums sound like, going back to the heavy rock drums…

Jordan: And we make sure you can hear our drums.

Kirkland: If you compare our tracks to some modern alternative music—where the hell’s the drums at? We tend to use drums as the driving force and the driving energy of everything that we do. We use a lot of different compressors on drums. One thing that’s really important to us is we tend to bus everything through one compressor, all the kicks and snares and hats. When John Bonham was recording his drums, it was just him and a couple mics. And all that was going through two, maybe three tracks, but everything was done on one drum set, and sonically it sounded like it was all together. And what we always try to do is we bring all of our drums, whether they come from 10 different tracks or two different samplers, we try to bring them all through the one compressor, so they get all together, and they get squashed down, and nothing’s jumping out, and it sounds like a solid sound, rather than a bunch of various different drum loops.

DJ Times: What kind of compressors do you use?

Jordan: Well, for our main mono compressor that we use on kick, snare, and hat, we use an old DBX-165, which is actually broken. We can only get it to work in the auto mode.

Kirkland: I found it at a pawn shop in Vegas. It used to be in a radio station. Some of the DJs could screw with it; they had it set perfectly for mic sounds or whatever. But it just happened to be a really great setting for drums too. We also use an Avalon 737, 747…

Jordan: There’s a lot of Avalon stuff, and then the Joe Meek stereo compressor on the stereo bus.

From the Cradle to the Rave

DJ Times: Did the Crystal Method arise from being DJs? How does the DJing fit in with the band?

Jordan: I was like a college radio DJ before I started making music, or maybe I was doing some limited club DJing around the time I started making music. And Scott was going club DJing longer than I was, but we’ve always been—the most important thing to us has always been the creation of the music and playing it live. But we still do some DJing.

Kirkland: We understand that the whole DJ world is a completely separate thing, and we tend not to blur the line. We tend not to try to confuse people. There’s so many better DJs out there than us—we just show up and play records that we like, and we have fun with it. It’s so difficult to follow, especially back when we had limited funds. We would rather spend our money on gear than on records. We appreciate what the DJ does, and when we go out and play records we just try to have fun with it.

DJ Times: Does the DJing directly affect the music you’re making?

Kirkland: Umm, no, I wouldn’t…

Jordan: Well, if we’re doing a remix or if we’re doing something specifically for the dancefloor, definitely. But when we’re making our album, we’re not that concerned with it.

DJ Times: You’re often associated with the early ’90s rave scene in the U.S. Do you ever think that kind of culture can ever take shape in a big way again? Or do you think it’s still happening?

Kirkland: It will never be the same as it was. It’s always going to continue to develop, and people will come in and out of it, and find different things that they’re into. But I think the spontaneity and the unknown factor that went into a lot of the late-’80s and early-’90s events—the “mystery,” the pay points and the map points, and not knowing whether this was really legal—that sort of vibe is definitely gone forever, simply because more people know about it.

Jordan: Yeah, it can never get back to how new it was.

Kirkland: Some of my memories of what was going on back then was that excitement and that thrill of being in the middle of something I’d never been in the middle of before—and getting that same vibe from everybody else. And it was just so fresh and so opposite of life in Las Vegas. You know, you go out and you go to a jock club, or you go to a bar, and you end up getting in a fight with somebody because you stepped on their toe, or you bumped into their girlfriend, and it was all about getting drunk and looking cool. And that whole early rave thing was so the opposite of that, it was something so pure. So living through that, and being a part of a lot of that, you realize that it’s never gonna go back to that, but you appreciate what still is true today: a lot of these events are all about the music, and that’s really the most important thing.