The Crystal Method blasts through on its `Mad Max' tour

By Jules Quartly
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Jun 26, 2004, Page 16

The Crystal Method plays tonight at Ministry of Sound. PHOTO COURTESY OF MOS

Taipei Times: How's the tour been going?

Scott Kirkland: This leg of the tour has just started. We're in Malaysia, now [Tuesday], then we go to Singapore after that we take in Taiwan. It's our first time in in Southeast Asia as DJs so we've been looking forward to it and it's going well.

TT: This time on tour you're just DJing.

Kirkland: Yeah, this time we're doing just the DJing and press and hope to come back with our live show. On our North American tour we finished in May, we did like 55 cities in 10 weeks. That was fantastic. Then we did some dates in Europe at the beginning of the year. Hopefully, we'll go back at the end of August. We've been busy.

TT: Does it get a bit mad?

Kirkland: It's strange, it's all quite daunting when you start out and you look at the tour book with the list of dates about two pages long, packing out up to six dates a week. It can be pretty arduous, but it goes by really quickly, so I don't mind. You do your work, log the memories, get home, decompress and get ready to go out again.

TT: If the tour was a film, which one would it be?

Kirkland: Well, at times on the road, it's sort of ... it's not in any way violent, but it's kinda roadwarrior-esqe in the way you're a group of people setting out across the desert, like Mad Max, I guess. But the great thing about is that you go out with, like a family, with the same sound techs and light techs to put up a big show. So to have those same people out every day building something, it's cool when the show goes off and there's a lot of happy people.

TT: Do you miss your homelife?

Kirkland: Yeah, of course. We've played a lot of shows and stuff, but we get to see around the world and in this business you don't know how long it will last so you just enjoy it while you've got it. We may never get the chance to see it again, so we try not to take it for granted and just try to take it all in, sightseeing. Maybe we don't see all we want to see, but we do see something. It's a working vacation.

TT: When you travel does it all seem the same after a while?

Kirkland: A little bit. Yeah, last night we went out and we wanted the `Malaysian experience,' the atmosphere and everything. But we went down the main intersection and there was the KFC and the international restaurants and the places trying to be beach bars, the German bar, the French bar. It's kind of strange, but you've just got to find someone who knows their way around and follow them for the real thing. I guess that's the key.

When you're in the club it's all the same because everybody reacts to music in the same way, so that's another thing. But that's one of the things we like about the electronic music scene.

TT: Were you musicians before you started DJing?

Kirkland: I played a little guitar and had some programming discs. I know my way around the keyboards. We [Ken Jordan and I] were doing production work. When we moved from Las Vegas to LA the rave thing kind of took over. We were like engineers before, for bands like Squeeze and stuff. So we've been doing it for a long time. The production thing kinda turned around when we realized it was much more fun making music for ourselves, than doing it for other people.

TT: How would you describe the relationship between rock and dance music? Siblings? divorced?

Kirkland: I guess they're bastard cousins, sometimes they get together at family functions, but for us in the States it was kinda natural to put the two together and that's what comes out in the studio. We welcome all influences.

TT: Would you mind ending up as dance dinosaurs?

Kirkland: I guess we're over 30 now and we do have our fans who've been around for a long time, but as long as we're having fun and keep enjoying it, we'll keep doing it until they tell us we're no longer welcome.