Flavor Crystals

By Jonathan Garrett Wednesday, Mar 25 2009

It must be some sort of cruel irony that I received a speeding ticket on my way to interview Flavor Crystals—after all, no one would ever accuse Josh Richardson and his band of living in the fast lane. The Crystals, rounded out by Dan Miller, Vince Caro, Nat Stensland, and Nick Foerster, are about to embark on their first national tour as the opening act for the Brian Jonestown Massacre, yet you'd be hard-pressed to find an active local band that has been around longer than they have. "We've been playing on and off for 13 years," says Richardson, reclining on a couch in the band's Minneapolis practice space shortly after my inopportune run-in with the police. "There was a time when we just jammed and had fun, didn't play out, but then one day we decided to write songs."

Those songs finally appeared on their long-gestating debut, 2005's On Plastic. Stylistically, the album reflected the band's deliberate, considered approach. Plastic, recorded by Stensland, featured glacially paced compositions and gnarled instrumental passages—Spacemen 3-indebted shoegaze approached with a North American jam band's sensibility. "Our songs kind of evolve organically," says Richardson. "All of us need to be in the room. This is definitely not a singer-songwriter project where I come in and hand everyone the song. For the album, we spent a lot of time together experimenting, but essentially what came out was live takes of the tracks."

The album was released by the local indie label MPLS Ltd., run by Christian Fritz, who is both a friend and fan of the band. But once Plastic was finally out, the band's momentum once again ground to a halt. Flavor Crystals hadn't died, but clearly the band was not a priority for anyone involved. Drummer Nick Foerster admits that all of the group's members have family commitments and regular jobs that demand significant time. As it turns out, he can't even join the band for the entirety of the upcoming Jonestown tour due to his inability to clear his calendar at home. (Jamie Bollman will pick up drumming duties for the second half of the tour.) "Just to get a practice together for [all of] us is a task," Foerster says. "Usually, it's based around a gig or recording some stuff, but fact is everyone's got their own lives."

Richardson thought that the band members' conflicting schedules might preclude a second record altogether. Fortunately, the band finally found a six-day window in January 2007 to record a follow-up. Through some stroke of luck, they also managed to coax recording engineer Kramer (Low, Galaxie 500) from his Florida home in the dead of winter to handle production duties. To ensure that the album was completed in the allotted time and to combat the band's tendency toward endless revision, Kramer forced the Crystals to "keep a lot of first takes." Richardson was hardly a fan of the approach during the recording process, but in hindsight, he appreciates the album's more spontaneous feel. "There are a lot of wacky, off-beat moments on it," he confesses. "When we play the songs live, they're actually much more cohesive, but I still really like the album—even if it sometimes sounds like another band made it."

The album doesn't sound quite as far removed from On Plastic as Richardson makes it out to be, but one can hear more foreign influences beginning to creep in, like the motor-tic Krautrock drumming found on "Churchfuzz" and "Homewrecker."

Through a bizarre set of circumstances, the self-titled second album is still unavailable on CD in record shops here in the U.S. MPLS Ltd. only released it on vinyl, and while the band planned to properly release it on CD domestically, those plans eventually fell though. The album did receive broad physical distribution on CD in England via Kramer's label Second Shimmy, as well as a fittingly dreamy title, Ambergris. However, the album's availability abroad is of little consolation to Twin Cities fans, who find themselves in the odd position of having to place an order online for a CD released by a local band. Richardson wants them to know he shares their frustration. "We're actually out of copies, too, so we're looking to import some just so we can have them on tour. Hopefully, we'll have them soon."

As usual, with Flavor Crystals, patience is a virtue. Fortunately, the band and their fans have had plenty of practice.

FLAVOR CRYSTALS will open for Brian Jonestown Massacre on THURSDAY, MARCH 26 at the FINE LINE MUSIC CAFÉ; 612.338.8100 - City Pages

7. Flavor Crystals, "Flavor Crystals" (mpls ltd)

The marriage of local space rockers the Flavor Crystals and legendary indie-producer Kramer proved to be a happy one. It's reminiscent of another Kramer-helmed disc, Galaxie 500's 1989 classic "On Fire," in that it sounds timeless and disconnected from any specific era or trend.

Key tracks: "Guppython," "Jumping Jacks"

-Ross Raihala

(Prince's Planet Earth was #10)
- Pioneer Press

Sometimes the music I find on the web doesn't fit in any neatly defined category. It's not quite right for my site but I want to make it fit anyway.

The band Flavor Crystals is a great example. Their spacey, dreamy rock just sounds great. I'd like to throw the terms folk, alt-country or americana in to their description somwewhere to make 'em fit Songs:Illinois but I can't.

For those who are fans of Flotation Toy Warning, Built Like Alaska, Flaming lips, Mercury Rev or Radar Bros. you now have a new band to follow. - Songs Illinois Blog

Do you ever wake up with a song in your head and wonder where it came from? It happens to me all the time. We all play DJ to the nighttime soap opera of our sweet dreams. Here's a scenario I see in my sleep: The city is receiving its first snowfall and I'm outside a rock club, bumming a cigarette. Its embers are a bitch to keep lit beneath the dewy flakes. From inside, I hear the faintest chime of guitar and shrug of a voice forming something like melody. Maybe the soundman is playing a down-tempo rocker from Sonic Youth's Murray Street. Anyway, that cigarette is as good as garbage, and I'm urged back to consciousness with a lithe "Wake up, wake up." That goose-down voice belongs to Flavor Crystals' Josh Richardson, who opens the candied psych ballad "Checker Board" on the Minneapolis quartet's debut. Even without the slo-mo snowdrifts and midnight lights, Flavor Crystals rely heavily on atmosphere; unfortunately they're not much for scene building. When Richardson announces a Dadaist shopping list ("Topsy/turvy/free-form/swervy") midway through "Poolja," his words seem merely objects, chosen for their sounds, à la Gertrude Stein's "Rose is a rose is a rose." In that case, these daydream believers have chosen the right patrons in Thurston and Donovan. The former's hypnotic drones surface in "Poblano" and "Sheep," while Flavor Crystals impressively turn the latter's dippy ditty "Sand and Foam," with its lyrical "tattooed trees" and "valley of Scorpio," into a straightforward rock ballad without much noodling. The guitarists' whisper-light reverberations wouldn't knock a beer off the bass cabinet, but could manage more than a somnambulist sway from the audience.

- Kate Silver

More proof that MySpace isn't just for teenyboppers and predators anymore: Local ambient-rock band Flavor Crystals connected with veteran indie-rock producer Kramer via the omnipresent networking site. That unlikely online hookup led to Kramer producing the Crystals' gorgeous new eponymous album, which they're promoting as a vinyl-only release Saturday at the Triple Rock.
"We got to chatting, and we worked it out to fly him into Minneapolis in the dead of winter," recounted Flavor Crystals leader Josh Richardson, a longtime fan of Kramer's work (Galaxie 500, Low, Daniel Johnston). "I figured he must have been excited, because leaving his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, must've been rough."Flavor Crystals" is awash in the beautiful but dissonant and vacant-sounding noise that Kramer is known for (as are the Crystals), from the My Bloody Valentine-copping gem "Church Fuzz" to more instrumental tracks like "Tsar Bomba" and "Smokestacks." It's the kind of swirling, atmospheric stuff you don't need a psychedelic light show or drugs to feel woozy listening to.

- Chris Riemenschnieder

"We love this band and we hope you do too!" - The Brian Jonestown Massacre

"...droning riffage, gossamer guitar webs and perfectly lazy-eyed vocals, fans...will be beside themselves when swooning to the hazy sounds of the Flavor Crystals."
- Rob Van Alstyne