As I drove through downtown Burlington on my way to work and passed the latest generation of college students, I saw the signs: The pants are getting baggier again. There are knee socks and chokers. And — Lord, help me — I even saw a kid wearing a bucket hat on the corner of College and Church the other day. It took every ounce of self-control in my body not to lean out the window and scream, “You’re going to bring back JNCOs, you crazy bastard! Do you just want to watch the world burn?”
Whether or not those PTSD-inducing jeans make a comeback, the evidence is incontrovertible: The ’90s are in vogue again. It’s been 30 years since the days of grunge, “Friends,” Starter jackets and, y’know, people in their thirties being able to buy a home. But, as is often the case, the wheel has turned, and the youths are taking the past and remixing it.
One aspect of the ’90s that never really went out of fashion was the electronic music scene. Pioneered by acts such as the Chemical Brothers, Massive Attack, Orbital and the Crystal Method, EDM went from the underground to the top of the charts during that decade.
“When we first started, we were a gateway to electronic music for a lot of kids,” said Scott Kirkland, cofounding member of the Crystal Method. “They heard some of our rock influences, and it created a bridge.”
Kirkland is now the sole member of the Crystal Method; his collaborator, Ken Jordan, retired from music in 2017. Ahead of his upcoming show on Saturday, April 22, at Club Metronome in Burlington, Kirkland and I chatted about the history of the project — and its future.
With albums like their breakout 1997 debut Vegas and the guest-heavy Tweekend, the Crystal Method became a household name in the ’90s and early 2000s. They dropped tracks on the soundtracks for the films Mortal Kombat and Spawn and video games such as Resident Evil and Need for Speed, and they composed the theme song of the TV show “Bones.”
“EDM has pretty much become mainstream,” Kirkland said. “All the artists that came after our generation took all those elements — the techno, the house, jungle, all of it — and fused it together. And the pop artists loved it, to the point where the biggest artists in the world use the techniques and production styles of all those classic EDM records.”
None of which has bothered Kirkland, who believes the genre should always be looking to grow, both in its reach and its artistry.
“It’s all cyclical, but the hope is each generation will do something different with their influences, and I find that to usually be the case,” Kirkland said. “That spirit helps EDM, techno, house — whatever the hell you want to call it — move forward.”
Kirkland still very much wants to be part of that evolution. Twenty-six years after dropping his first record, the Las Vegas native is excited for what the future holds for the Crystal Method.
“Being on my own has changed the dynamic quite a bit,” he admitted. “The great thing about my partnership with Ken was that we always pushed each other to stay fresh.
“When I made the first record without him [2018’s The Trip Home], I was excited to take the Crystal Method and go in a direction I thought it needed to go,” he went on. “But on the other hand, I knew if Ken was there, I could play him stuff and he would say, ‘That’s great; that one sucks; let’s work on this other one,’ which is huge for me.”
Kirkland and Jordan used to take turns spinning tracks three at a time. Since Jordan’s retirement, Kirkland has leaned into being a solo artist, enjoying his newfound freedom and discovering that being alone onstage has its advantages.
“Now I can script out an entire story for the night through my curated playlist,” he said. “It adds more to the sense of continuity. And I get totally lost in it, between triggering samples, playing synths on top, layering a few songs on top of each other … In the past, with Ken and I swapping, it would have been really difficult to achieve that sort of thematic feel.”
Kirkland is excited to see the mix of old heads and new fans at his shows — a generational diversity he attributes to EDM’s ’90s move into the mainstream.
“It’s at the point where I’m seeing parents bringing their kids to the shows,” Kirkland said. “When you’ve been around as long as we have, you come into contact with fans whose lives have been affected by your music. There’s really no better feeling than knowing something you created can have that power.”
This article appears in Apr 19-25, 2023.
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