In 1989, Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland met while working at a Smith’s in southeast Las Vegas. The young men shared a passion for techno, and together they began playing DJ sets of those electronic beats at long-defunct UNLV area bars like the Sports Pub, in an era when their stages generally belonged to alternative rock and little else. Before long, Jordan and Kirkland formed a producing and performing duo, calling themselves The Crystal Method. They relocated to LA and began producing singles together—bangers like 1994’s “Now is the Time” and 1995’s “Keep Hope Alive,” whose buzzing synths, pulsing bass and fist-punch rock drums hit as hard today as the day they were made.
In 1997, the Method released their debut LP, Vegas. (The hometown tribute didn’t end there; the album’s kaleidoscopic cover was made from a photo taken inside the parking garage of Downtown’s former Binion’s Horseshoe.) The group’s timing could hardly have been more opportune; as a Reddit poster put it some years back, “Holy hell, 1997 was a good year for electronic music.” Vegas came out alongside Aphex Twin’s Come to Daddy, the Chemical Brothers’ Dig Your Own Hole, Daft Punk’s Homework, DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing, The Prodigy’s Fat of the Land and other key releases by Plaid, Amon Tobin and Portishead.
Vegas not only belongs in that influential company but helped to define it. An epic, dirty piece of work., Vegas doesn’t seem to emerge from the speakers so much as it erupts through the floor. Its singles, “Busy Child” and “Trip Like I Do,” became omnipresent not only in the clubs, but on rock radio. In September 1997, Jordan and Kirkland returned to Las Vegas—not to bag groceries but as the headlining act of the Electric Highway tour, also featuring Fluke, Arcana and venerable local DJ Robert Oleysyck. The event was held at the future home of the Electric Daisy Carnival, Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
Today, the Crystal Method is just Scott Kirkland. (Ken Jordan has retired from the music industry, though he and Kirkland remain strong friends.) And while the landscape for electronic dance music has changed considerably in 25 years—as has the landscape for all popular music, really—the Method is still in it. They have a strong new album out this year—April’s The Trip Out—and Kirkland continues to do soundtrack and production work, and even represented Nevada in NBC’s Eurovision-inspired American Song Contest.
Earlier this year, the Method man spoke to the Weekly about Vegas’ enduring legacy, and what Southern Nevada still means to him. The Crystal Method is set to play alongside fellow big beaters Orbital at RVLTN’s Vegas97 event, September 24 at the Downtown Las Vegas Events Center—25 years after the group helped set to something big in motion.
You know, this is almost a reunion. We met briefly at the Crystal Method at the Vegas Speedway stop of the Electric Highway tour back in September 1997.
I was just thinking about that show recently. A friend of a friend was at that show as well, and she’s now the talent coordinator for The Voice and American Song Contest. She got a little heatstroke, and my wife, who was at the merch booth, took care of her. 25 years later, she's calling about getting the Crystal Method in as the band to represent Nevada (in ASC). It's pretty wild, how things come around… It’s one of the coolest things about having the great fortune of longevity in this business, talking to people that were at certain events.
I remember it was a great show, a great homecoming.
It was just kind of monumental. Especially considering that, five years before that, we were doing events in underground [venues]. I think that at the time, the Shark Club [a defunct dance club, located roughly where TopGolf now stands] was the the only spot to go out and enjoy electronic dance music. Now, of course, things have changed quite a bit in Las Vegas.
In 1992, I don’t think even the most optimistic of Vegas’ early rave adopters could have predicted European-style clubs in every casino.
No, isn’t that crazy? Let's say that once they realized that you could charge $1,000 for a bottle of 1942 Tequila and that people are gonna pay it … it's a pretty wild world, for sure. I've gone to a couple of them; some friends, Dada Life, played Hakkasan a few years back. I don't get out to a lot of clubs, but it's definitely nice to be in a situation where you get VIP’d into one of those worlds, because at my age, I like a booth to sit down in and someone taking care of me.
I heard that. How often do you get back to Vegas?
My mom, brother and stepfather lived there for many years, but they recently moved to California, so I don't get there as often; it used to be about two or three times a year, but now it’s once a year. But I'm always fascinated with the way the town has changed and developed… There’s always something new to look at, but there's also many of the same roads and communities and places where I was hanging out when I was growing up there, so I still feel a connection.
Many thanks for representing your home state in the ASC, by the way, even if Nevada didn’t go all the way. We were robbed.
Somebody texted me and was like, “I can't believe Michael Bolton went through [to the next challenge] and you didn't,” and I said, “Well, middle America loves their nostalgic ‘8os heartthrob.” … Our performance was over the top. We had lasers, multiple screens, we looked good and sounded great. I would have liked to have gone to the semi-finals, but I at the same time I was like, “Whew, we don't have to try to top that” [laughs].
You’ve made two albums since Ken retired in 2017: The Trip Out and 2018’s The Trip Home. Has becoming a solo act made you more prolific?
Not necessarily. The great benefit of having someone [as a collaborator] that you first you like, admire [and] love like a brother, like Ken, is the different perspective [they offer]. He had the ability to talk me down from something that wasn't that great or prop up something that had potential. … That's a very valuable commodity, and something that I definitely miss. But I do have a circle of collaborators and friends and creators that I share things with, and I have a lot of stuff sitting in on hard drives that didn't make the cut for this project, or the last project—and sometimes those things will come back around.
I have more freedom, and with that freedom I'm able to work with people that I admire. But I do miss Ken. I love him. I'm super happy that he's happy, living down in Costa Rica. It’s a completely different lifestyle, living off the land in Central America, but more power to him.
Well, congratulations to you both on Vegas. It was a debut album to be proud of, and it still sounds pretty damn good 25 years on.
Yeah. It’s remarkable, reflecting on the Electric Highway tour, shooting the photos for the album artwork and going around this world so many times playing those Vegas tracks from that album and having so many people make a connection to it. Countless people have come up to me and said that that Vegas was their gateway drug, if you will, to electronic music; that's something that both Ken and I are proud of. The stories are always fascinating, I've had soldiers tell me that they were in Afghanistan—in situations where they weren't sure they're going to get through the night—and all they had was our music and their earbuds or their Walkman. And people that have had to drive across the country because of their parents that just died, and they listened to our music to get them [there].
These are powerful moments in people's lives, and to have people tell us these stories and share those experiences with us is something that we couldn't have imagined as we sat writing that album in that studio in La Crescenta, California 26 years ago. It's real cool to have that, and it's also really cool to be able to represent our hometown with that record.
