I am a massive geek. I’ve been listening to this album for the last couple of days and all I can think of are old demos for the ZX Spectrum and Amiga – experimental programmes made by bedroom coders to test out the abilities of their humble machine, using soundtracked by a keyboard virtuoso behind a software sequencer. Listening some of Crystal Castles‘ new album its difficult to tell whether they’ve ripped off old chiptunes or whether by virtue of their choice of instruments they just seem that way.

Whatever. CC make 3 types of tunes: angry songs (Alice Practice, XXZXCUZX Me) with a lot of distortion and noise, moody death-disco songs (Crimewave remix, Vanished, Untrust Us) and songs that could of dropped out of the kind of 8-bit nostalgia (1991, Black Panther) I spoke of above.

The first two types are easily the best on the album. Alice Practice is not really a song; more of a digital epileptic fit. If that’s just a bit of an illusion, really the song is highly organised but sounds like its collapsing all around you. It is ruddy clever, it is. Crimewave, Vanished and others are more subtle and minimalistic with a slower depressed pace. I imagine this is what people may have danced to in the 1920s, if they had left over Ataris. The video game noises still form the track but they’re used to actually do something more than just a technology demo – they actually set a mood. A few songs here, like 1991, sound a bit too much like house-via-SID file, and I don’t know what’s new here at all.

I’m quite conflicted about Crystal Castles. Certain tracks on this album are always on repeat here and have been since I first got my hands on them. What the band proves are that the noises that I used to be subjected to while playing on my old ZX Spectrum can be used to make something approaching pop music. There’s a fair bit of filler on here, tracks with no consequence and that sound nothing more gripping than mobile phone ringtones. But even with the band’s shitty scenester attitude there’s a lot of decent bleeping going on.

UPDATE: A while ago Pitchfork posted a mixtape of some of CC’s “hits”, which has a good number of the songs covered above. Enjoy.