Crystal Clear

They’re named after an unfinished opera by the singer’s grandfather and they use instruments other bands don’t know exist – Camilla Pia meets Crystal Fighters, the eccentric dance-punks of 2010.

With their long matted locks, foliage-filled press shots and tendencies to pen tracks about the sun and the universe, The Fly is on hippy alert when we’re introduced to Crystal Fighters’ Sebastian Pringle. Potential code red here, guys. However, when we meet, there’s not even a whiff of tree-hugger from the singer; he and his band are merely more broad-minded than your average East London creatives – most of whom don’t look further than Brick Lane bagel shops for their inspiration. This thrillingly unique outfit (comprising of Pringle and friends Gilbert, Graham, Laure and Mimi) have recently settled in a warehouse in the UK capital. But, as debut album ‘Star Of Love’ proves – a total dancefloor revolution in its dizzying genre fusions and myth-making – their influences come from much further afield. And so the tale begins in the Basque countryside, where vocalist Laure discovers an unfinished opera called Crystal Fighters written by her deceased grandfather during his final months as he descended, tragically, into madness. She is immediately captivated by its seemingly prophetic contents and brings it to London to share with her four friends, who all become so obsessed with it they are driven to form a band in the hope of exploring the themes and wild spirit of the deranged scrawls with the aim of ultimately finishing it and continuing the musical legacy of the book. It’s quite a story, and as Pringle explains, since they first laid eyes on the work, it has utterly consumed them. “It has had this huge impact on our lives,” he says. “Just the beauty of the object itself, the unkempt form of it… it wasn’t like finding a printed book, we had to really decipher it. And the image of it and the style in which it was written made us think about how we wanted to create something that had this similar mystique and gravity to it.”

Stories about some of life’s biggest mysteries, the omnipotence of the sun and its power over peoples’ bodies and minds, loneliness, love, hate and death were penned – “all the big ones,” laughs Pringle – and he, Gilbert and Graham set about fusing them with the live instrumentals they had honed on the club scene, developing more formal song structures in the process and learning about Basque folk instrumentation and melodies. “The songwriting on ‘Star Of Love’ takes inspiration from throughout the history of rock and pop music and in particular, reference points that haven’t been plundered as much by modern bands and that we feel have been underappreciated. At the beginning it wasn’t so much about the music,” he goes on to explain, “it was more the fascination with this book and the culture it invoked. But I was really interested in lots of French, Italian and Spanish music anyway and after a lot of research we found this little pocket of land where the music isn’t perhaps as listenable as traditional Western European stuff. Its curious instrumentation and strange history really drew us in, so we combined it with what we were making already and this hybrid emerged.” Thus, they’re now proud players and fans of such instruments as the txalaparta (horizontal wooden beams beaten with mallets), tabor (rope-tuned snare drum) and txistu (a Basque pipe whistle) as well as your usual electro, rock and punk fare. Shuffling on your average Crystal Fighter’s iPod must be utterly bizarre. “Oh yes,” Pringle chortles. “It’s funny, you can end up chancing upon a choral piece featuring two hundred Basque male voices and it definitely puts you in a certain world… But there is a definite need at the moment in music for things to sound a bit different,” he adds. “All of the specialist dance people are doing their thing in such interesting ways that we hope to be bringing a similarly interesting aspect to more indie based dance music; combining pushing sonic boundaries as well as boundaries with lyrics and songwriting.” Mission most definitely accomplished.

‘Star Of Love’ is released on Zirkulo on September 13th.