MUSIC INTERVIEW: THE CRYSTAL METHOD

Electronic Music Stars Align with Soul Icon to Lead a Musical Re:Generation

By: Team Buzzine

December 16, 2011

In almost twenty years of making music together as The Crystal Method, Scott Kirkland and Ken Jordan have travelled the world, recorded platinum albums, and collaborated with an incredible range of musicians stretching across genre boundaries, including Tom Morello, Scott Weiland, LMFAO, and Matisyahu. So when it came time for the creators of the Re:Generation Music Project to assemble their five superstar producers to collaborate with vocalists from completely different worlds, Scott and Ken quickly got the call to head to Detroit to work with R&B legend Martha Reeves.

At the project’s recent preview party in Los Angeles, California, The Crystal Method sat down with Buzzine’s Stefan Goldby to talk about that amazing experience alongside the Machinima collaborations and soundtrack contributions that have made up the rest of their 2011...and also about how happy they are that Lady Gaga’s global success has finally stopped her from continuing to be able to win all the electronic genre Grammy awards...

Stefan Goldby: Here we are backstage at an official preview party for the Re:Generation Music Project: How did you guys first come to be involved in this adventure?

Scott Kirkland: We were at Coachella last year, and Richard [Bishop] our manager came up to us and… he didn’t want to make us nervous, so he said there were ‘some people’ that wanted us to meet, and then we had a great conversation with Nick and some of the other people involved, and we started to learn a little bit more about it: The concept of electronic DJ producers or whatever, working within different genres. And then, about five months later, it all came together and they were nice enough to grant us the R&B genre, and we just went from there… and had a lot of fun with it.

SG: Your portion of ‘it’ took you to Detroit – a city with a rich general musical history and a leading role specifically in the history of electronic music: What did you see of the state of the Motor City in 2011… what did you see in terms of art helping that community slowly come back to life?

Ken Jordan: It was really interesting because we had been playing Detroit pretty regularly and we had been having really good shows, so that was kind of at a contrast with what we saw when we were filming the movie. Martha took us around to a few spots, and some of it was really sad. We went by the Ford [Auditorium], and it was the first place she had played and sang in front of a big audience, and it happened to be getting demolished right at the time we were visiting it. And a lot of the city is in bad shape, but there’s a lot of hope. And we went down to the Heidelberg Project…

SK: …which this looks kind of like it could be part of a set. We’d been there many times. We used to play out at Pontiac – we played there at least ten times: Always had great crowds. Geordie [Walker] from Killing Joke used to live there with his girlfriend: Many times we’d hang out with him, have great shows at the State Theatre within the city. But I hadn’t been there in a while. First of all, I don’t think there’s a city on Earth that can have more claims to fame and nicknames… I mean, they created techno, they created the entire nature of the motor/automobile business… Motown, Eminem, Kiss, Kid Rock – I’m gonna throw him in there just ‘cause it’s fun: He’s a crazy cat.

KJ: Ted Nugent…

SK: …that pig-killin’ guy is still out there having fun with it… I don’t think he lives in Detroit anymore, but my mom and my uncles were born in Detroit. My family lived there – a great town. So going back with Martha… who used to be on the city council and knows a lot about the city… and is basically the queen of the city – walking around with her is like walking around with royalty, but nice royalty, the royalty where people actually like their royalty. Everybody loved her. She was amazing. The stories that she told us about the city and about her experiences in Hitsville, and all the people that we met – it was just really one of those special moments where we knew things were going forward in Detroit.

We’d been coming to the city regularly, but we felt there was a different energy there: They built a baseball stadium right downtown. They built the Ford stadium down there. There was definitely an effort to re-infuse some positive things within the city. It’s still weird, walking around the city. Somebody was walking with us – a friend of a friend. He was like, “Oh yeah, you could buy that 16-story building for $750,000,” or something like that. You couldn’t even get a rat’s nest apartment in New York for that, but you can buy this entire building for that much. So it’s a really weird city, but there’s hope. Ndamukong Suh is only on a two-game suspension, so he’ll be back soon. [Laughs]

KJ: Calvin Johnson…

SK: Oh, he’s amazing. But the city has so much history and has so much to offer, I hope that people will start to discover it again.

SG: You guys have worked with so many different artists in so many different genres over the last few years, but what was the biggest surprise in working with Martha?

KJ: We have done a lot of collaborations and a lot of this process was familiar to us, and we insisted that we got to work the way we normally work – we develop the track in our studio, we get to write it, and then we develop it for the vocalist. So that’s how that worked out, and it was great because when we met Martha, when it got down to actually her singing, she ended up helping us write part of the song…

SK: She made us rewrite part of the song. [Laughs]

KJ: Yeah, she was very feisty. She was the sweetest, nicest person in the world, and she was amazing to work with, but it was great to know that she still had that artistic integrity and she wanted to fight for what she thought was right for her to do on the song. So that was surprising and really gratifying as well.

SK: In the end, though, big hugs, amazing energy… The recording session went well into the evening. Ken was there when we left the session with Martha, and I thought you were gonna say the most surprising thing was her energy.

KJ: Stamina/energy, yeah!

SK: Right off the bat, she threw the entire production off kilter when she said, “If I don’t eat, you’re not gonna like me. So let’s go over to this place…”

KJ: And get some grits.

SK: “No, don’t worry about it. We can film there. They know me there.” So her lawyer called to get permits… she immediately was in control, and her appreciation for the city and her knowledge of the city, and her memory of everything – she is able to tell a story like you were in the room when it happened. So I hope she’s got a screenplay, a book… I’m telling you, she’s got an amazing story that’s brought her to this point, and maybe at the end of the movie, it’s you, me and her rocking out to the song. That would be something, right? That’s not gonna happen… is it Stefan? [Laughs]

SG: We can but hope... There’s always something new to learn, right? What did you get to take from this project as your favorite thing about the experience?

KJ: As a lasting thing, I think my favorite thing about it is that it definitely has serious R&B elements to it and it has electronic elements to it. It sounds like a Crystal Method track, and Martha Reese sounds very natural singing in the track, so that is the best thing that I take from the track.

SK: The most amazing thing is my daughter loves it so much – she’s three – and I have video iPhone proof of her love for it… “Daddy, play ‘I’m Not Leaving,’” and then she starts to come out of her shell… although the microphone is put in front of the teddy bear. The other day, I was in the other room, and she was singing along, and I was like, “Wow.” When ‘Mommy’ said that we were going out tonight to this event, all she heard was, “Oh, I hope I get to hear the song!” The fact that someone that young can find something in it…that’s one of the greatest things that anybody who ever attempted to write a song or write something of lasting importance – someone that’s so in love with it that they sings it and happily sings it, so that’s a really cool thing.

SG: Re:Generation is a very non-traditional music project. And part of a new pattern for The Crystal Method. Historically, from Vegas all the way through Divided By Night, you guys followed a somewhat traditional pattern of… make an album, tour an album, rinse, repeat. There were always mixes, singles, and other stuff in between, but since 2009, the industry has gone crazy too, and you guys have broken away from that cycle over the last couple of years…

SK: We’re in the spin cycle: rinse, repeat. [Laughs]

SG: It has been EPs, it’s been soundtracks, you’ve really started to mix it up: Was that taking opportunities that came along, or was there a grand plan afoot? How did it all switch around from your perspective?

KJ: I think we did stay in the normal album cycle routine, even when we started our own label and started putting out the records ourselves. But I think what’s great about the new version of the music industry is that we can do what we want, so it is opportunities that have come along, and also just knowing that the record business isn’t the same anymore, so it’s not so album-oriented for us anymore.

SK: Yes, we’ve been doing all the things that you appreciate us doing and all the things that you never knew that we could do, so our future is in front of us…

SG: Earlier this year, you guys were the first artists to launch Machinima’s music video series. What was the hook there? What was interesting to you about that opportunity, in terms of the creation of “Play for Real”?

KJ: What was interesting to us was how many viewers and how many people they could get to, and then just the unique and new idea of taking game elements and editing to a video of ours. We wanted to see what it was like, and it came out really great, so we totally dug it.

SK: I play video games. Ken does sometimes, right?

KJ: Pong.

SK: Right. You are so good at Pong. We had a 14-hour session of back-and-forth at Pong, and I think both of us realized that we should never play Pong again. [Laughs] Steve Jobs had something to do with Pong, or Wozniak, or one of those guys.

KJ: …Wozniak designed Breakout.

SK: Oh, the next level of Pong…

KJ: …single man upside-down Pong.

SK: So you’re all by yourself. You didn’t need anybody else: The beginning of video game masturbation, basically. [Laughs]

KJ: Steve got a bonus for getting it on less chips, and Steve didn’t tell the other Steve. [Laughs]

SK: Well, Wozniak ended up going out with that comedian for about five minutes – Kathy Griffin.

KJ: Did he really?!

SK: So I think maybe he lost again. I don’t know.... [Laughs]

But the video game thing, this idea of mashing up video game elements has been around for a while and it’s been done by some really clever people, but it hasn’t been able to be blown up in the way that Machinima.com has been able to do it… We’ve got a couple things on YouTube – fighting games where people edit things. I love the passion of that. I love the idea of: “F***, this is amazing!” Taking this video game that I’m really into, because you know these guys are playing the video games at the same time they’re listening to music and they’re going, “Oh, did you see that? See how I kicked your ass at the same time that drumbeat came in?” That’s creative.

That’s a really fundamental, organic birth of something cool. That’s how the energy starts in this new age of YouTube and access to programs that allow you to do these things. So Machinima – we knew that they were a video game community that was extensive and that was loyal, and this guy sent us some things, and they took these two characters from a game called Wasteland – and they’re not even the main characters - they were sort of like the R2D2/C3P0 from Star Wars… but it made it like it was written to the script of the song. Of course “Play for Real”… play video games… all of it was a fruitcake of ecstasy, basically… [Laughs] …I try to come up with new things each day that are hopefully like, “Trademark!”

SG: Your trademark has also branched out even recently more into soundtracks. Can we round out our evening tonight by talking about your Real Steel experience earlier this year?

KJ: That was actually a great experience. The director, Shawn Levy, had been wanting to get us to score something for one of his films, and he thought this would be a really great opportunity.

SK: He had used our music, not in the movie, but in Night at the Museum, with Ben Stiller, who’s a friend. [Laughs] Remember in that movie Ben Stiller was being chased by bones of a dinosaur…. obviously there is no dinosaur there, and Ben is not one of these character actors that gets into the…rips his shirt off and gets down there yippee kay-ay, so [Shawn] would play the song through the system, he told us at this meeting, to get Ben Stiller psyched up. Like [snapping fingers] “What’s that song? That ‘Name of the Game’ song? Keep playing that…”

And then… fast forward to Tropic Thunder… Ben Stiller called us up to use “Name of the Game” in Tropic Thunder in a big scene, and had us remix part of that. So yes, Shawn Levy – that same guy – got us for both… Did you see Real Steel? It’s really great. I took my son there recently. I love the fact that he was, “Who’s gonna win, Dad?” That’s one of those great moments. [Whispers] “You know it’s gonna be a tie; I think they want a sequel. Shut up.” [Laughs] But that was a fun movie. We loved every minute of that project. Shawn’s enthusiasm, everybody at Dreamworks – it was just really cool being a part of that.

SG: Out of all of these different things that have been going on the last couple of years…

SK: …this moment right here with you is the best!

SG: This moment right here? Thank you: That’s all I’m fishing for.

SK: [Laughs]

SG: What, out of the state of the music industry right now, makes you guys most excited as artists? All bets are off. You really can do whatever you want: What does that mean for The Crystal Method?

KJ: I think one of the most exciting things right now is that Skrillex has got five Grammy nominations. I mean, that’s incredible: That’s all great news…

SK: …where was Lady Gaga? I don’t think Lady Gaga was in the electronic category… like she was the year we were nominated… she was underground then: She was cool underground. [Laughs] … fortunately, on the last two mega-selling records, I don’t think she listed herself in the electronic category… but five is amazing!

KJ: Five is great.

SK: Best New Artist, Best Remix, Best Song…

KJ: [Singing to the tune of Subway’s Five Dollar Footlong ads] Five. Five Grammy, Five Grammy nominations…

SK: Oh wow, you’re just writing the jingles – I got to see if the people over at Subway will take that... [Snapping fingers] [Singing] “Five Grammy nominations.” I love it!

The Re:Generation Music Project will be released in February during Grammy Week 2012.

The ‘Real Steel’ Original Soundtrack is out now on Interscope Records.

The Crystal Method’s ‘Play For Real’ EP and ‘Divided By Night’ album are out now on Tiny e Records.