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	THE CRYSTAL METHOD Trance not dance

Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland, the American production team who make up the Crystal Method, have attracted an FM rock audience thanks to their hit "Trip like I Do" and radio-hit remixes like P.O.D.’s "Boom" and Ceasefire’s "Trick Shot." Their new Community Service, Vol. 2 (Ultra) depends less on rock textures than on dance-music tastes. Although many of its 17 continuously mixed (and remixed) tracks feel dry and abrasive, in the manner of the rock-favoring Chemical Brothers, the only ones with explicit rock-radio input are the Doors’ "Roadhouse Blues" and the Smashing Pumpkins’ "1979." Elsewhere, the set moves from sweetly spacy ("Intro") to Belgian techno (Evil Nine’s "We Have the Energy," "Keep Hope Alive") to diva-style Eurohouse (Dylan Rhymes featuring Katy Ellis’s "Salty") and back to sweetly spacy again ("Kalifornia," Uberzone’s "Octopus," UNKLE featuring Ian Brown’s "Reign," and, best of all, "Bound Too Long"). More soaring than Underworld, more Euro than Prodigy, looser than deep house but darker than Italian disco, the Crystal Method’s latest session gets down low even as it reaches for the heights. And it does reach — upward and outward, just as disco at its best always has.

Touring in support of Community Service, Vol. 2, Jordan and Kirkland DJ’d at Axis a week ago Wednesday. Live, in front of a large but not sellout audience, the duo maintained their new emphasis on trance tastes. DJing one after the other — with no difference between the two in sound selection or mix techniques — they played some tracks from the new CD and some not so new. They laid down a succession of trip-hoppy, deep hard grooves, any one of which could have carried an entire two-hour segue of continuous mixing. Yet though they DJ’d for two hours (and took the stage on time, unlike many), they stopped each of their gutsy grooves, using silence breaks or extended orchestral sound distortion. Each seemed less interested in keeping the audience’s feet dancing than in twisting the audience’s brains. Most of their vocal inputs were samples, a harsh and often screamy sound but one that at least in the opening "Feel Fabulous" gave a spiffy, diva-style air to the music. That opening, however, was misleading. Trance the Crystal Method’s performance was, in taste and temperature, but without continuous surges of rhythm, the set felt more like a band performance than a DJ one. Applause was called for rather than on-the-move, disco-club cheering — and applause was given.