The Crystal Method is Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland, from LA in California. These boys make amazing break beats and big beats music which are along the lines of The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim. Their music has appeared everywhere, from video games (EA Sport games, Splinter Cell and Need for Speed: Underground) to commercials, from popular tv shows (Third Watch, Dark Angel and Bones) to movies (xXx, Gone in Sixty Seconds, Blade II and many more).
Released in July 2001 with much anticipation, Tweekend is their second album out of the 6. The studio they used for recording some of their albums was in an underground shelter, which was later relocated in a friend’s garage. The Crystal Method, along with other bands, helped revolutionize the electronica music to turn it into what it is today. In case you didn’t know, this album has an explicit lyric sticker on it. The song
Name of the Game contains some swearing so if you are a parent looking to buy this for your kid, I would take this one big song into consideration. Also, TCM has two guess appearances on Tweekend, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello and Velvet Revolver (formally from the Stone Temple Pilots) vocalist Scott Weiland. Here’s is what is good to show you why Tweekend is a very good album and what was bad to show what could be improved.
The good stuff:
- The beats, I have to mention that. Of course this makes the whole album but like common, they are amazing! If you like this kind of music, I’m positive you must of heard of
Name of the Game or
PHD. In pretty much every track there is something new to listen to and in some there is even lyrics. I would review each song but it is a little hard to review/describe sounds and beats so I will just do a review on
Name of the Game. Some of the songs you can dance/break-dance to and others are good songs to put in a fight scene or when you have a really cool guy walking in a room and he is about to do something huge. This is definitely some good party music. There is a good use of keyboards, guitars, synthesizers, drums and whatever else you might think there is in techno songs.
- The use of the speakers. Ok, I know this sounds a little stupid but that is something I love. The beats will go from one speaker to another and makes it sounds amazing or two different sounds will be coming out of each speaker respectively. It makes the songs so much cooler.
- The length of the songs and the album. All the songs are around 4 minutes or longer and the whole album is 1 hour and 8 minutes long. The album is perfect for a road trip or just to past the time.
- The replay value. My dad bought me this album when it first came out in 2001, it is currently 2006 and I still listen to it all the time. I probably will never get tired of it.
The bad stuff:
- The repetitiveness. Now I know a lot of people like “trance” songs but I can do without. The base beat for most of the songs are alike and some of the effects can be heard in other songs as well.
- The lyrics. Some of them don’t really fit into the context of some of the songs and they are not really good. They are just plain lyrics which sound like they were made by a ten year old (I know it’s just techno music but still; if you add lyrics, make them good).
Honestly, I can’t find a lot of bad things in Tweekend. It is such a good album.
The song
Name of the Game is phenomenal. Lasting a little over 4 minutes, this song is a staple TCM song, I know it has appeared in Resident Evil (probably others too but I don’t know which ones) and it was the intro music for Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell. Such a good guitar riff (played by Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine) with some nice scratching done by DJ Swamp (from Beck) and many cool sound effects, this song is bound to impress you. The catchy “Calling all freaks” and “Listen all you mother f***ers” will definitely get your body going. There is also a remix version of this song on the album. On the last song,
Tough Guy, the song ends around 6:16 or so, now the track is 11:32 minutes long, something is wrong here. Fast forward the song until 7:14 and it will start. It’s similar to the original but you will notice the difference, I won’t tell you more so go check it out yourself…
I recommend this cd for anyone who likes electronica/techno music. The beats are just superb and you can tell a lot of time has been put into making this album a success.
Recommended tracks:
-PHD
-Name of the Game (remix)
-Wild, Sweet and Cool
Final rating: 4.5/5
This Message Edited On 01.28.06
