[INTERVIEW]: Crystal Fighters "Cave Rave" Q&A

Hot on the heels of Crystal Fighters' "Cave Rave" release, we sat down for an interview with the group to chat about their new projects, upcoming tour, and more.

KKS: Your sound is very influenced by basque culture. For those not familiar with the culture, what do you want them to keep in mind while listening to your album?

Gilbert: The bass culture is one of the oldest cultures in the world, one of the oldest languages in the world. They have a historical and musical lineage that’s extremely strong and very interesting and mysterious. For us, what it really means is a whole sort of new world of instruments and the feel for the region gives us a lot of mystery and a lot of like cryptic feelings almost and if people can take that away from the album that would be great.

KKS: What should fans expect when they see you live?

Gilbert: It’s like all the elements of the universe combining together at once, at one moment.

KKS: Tell us about the inspiration for Cave Rave -- both the album and the actual rave in a cave.

Gilbert: They’ve been doing raves in caves or cultural events in caves in the Basque country for thousands of years, ranging from witchcraft to pagan ceremonies to executions of pagans and witchcraft people. There’s this place in Basque country which is this amazing half indoor half outdoor cave and they haven’t done events there for 20 years. We’ve always known about these events when we started the band so when it came to writing the 2nd album we went to the Basque country to write all the songs.

We started to put ourselves in the mindset of what came before the Basque and started thinking about where creativity itself started from and what led people in caves for example, to draw on the walls and to express themselves. That got us thinking that maybe caves where at once this amazing place where people would collect these spiritual and sort of out of body sensations and then we thought, well that’s actually quite similar to a club or a gig venue, you go in, it’s dark with lots of people, there’s an event and you come out and your views on things change. So it was a combination of going back to the old cultures and the fact that we knew about these cave raves that have been happening for thousands of years, so being able to do one was a real honor.

KKS: What's the next 6 months look like for you all? What can fans look forward to?

Gilbert: We are releasing singles from the album, like “LA Calling”, and “Wave,” so it’s going to be music videos and remixes, but for the most part we’re going to be playing live a lot. At the moment we just arrived in New York to start our US tour, supporting another band and doing our own dates, then we go back to Europe and we’re going to be playing a lot, we’re touring pretty much through December. Maybe you’ll even get to hear a few extra tracks that didn’t make the album.

KKS: What artists are you all currently digging?

Gilbert: We’re really into like this new band called Arthur Beatrice, Tame Impala, producer Cashmere Cat, he’s really cool and probably going to be producing a Kanye or JayZ album at some point. And I actually really like the new Drake album. It’s great being on tour and meeting lots of other artists, you’re always getting introduced to new music so I can’t wait to hear the next big thing.

Speaking of "LA Calling", the group just released the remix package for the track, which can be purchased on on iTunes or streamed on Spotify.

LA Calling Remixes 1. LA Calling (Radio Edit) 2. LA Calling (Curses Remix) 3. LA Calling (NO CEREMONY/// Remix) 4. LA Calling (Siloet Remix) 5. LA Calling (Jabru Remix) 6. LA Calling (Memtrix Remix) 7. LA Calling (DE$iGNATED Remix) 8. LA Calling (Mojo Filter Liquid Sun Remix) 9. LA Calling (Facing Jinx Remix) 10. LA Calling (Sun City Remix) 11. LA Calling (The Golden Boy Remix)

TOUR DATES

Supporting Portugal. The Man, except *

10/4 – West Columbia, SC – New Brookland Tavern* 10/5 – Nashville, TN – The High Watt* 10/7 – Tampa, FL – Crowbar* 10/8 – Lake Buena Vista, FL – House of Blues 10/9 – Ft. Lauderdale, FL – Revolution Live 10/12 -- New Orleans, LA – Republic New Orleans* 10/14 – Dallas, Texas – Club Dada* 10/15 – Tulsa, OK – Cain’s Ballroom 10/16 – Columbia, MO – Forest Rose Park at Mojo’s 10/17 – Kansas City, MO – The Midland by AMC* 10/18 – Boulder, CO – Boulder Theatre 10/19 – Denver, CO – Ogden Theatre 10/21 – Salt Lake City, UT – Murray Theatre 10/22 – Reno, NV – Knitting Factory 10/23 – Ventura, CA – Ventura Theatre 10/24 – Los Angeles, CA – The Fonda Theatre* 10/25 – San Diego, CA – Casbah*