John Vanderslice has announced his new album CRYSTALS 3.0, and shared it’s lead single “Crystals 26.” The culmination of a span of ecstatic experimentation with harsh noise and hard drugs, curious samples and cascading sequencers—it is both a new pinnacle for Vanderslice and the manifestation of a revelatory outlook.

Named for a novel method of synthesizing pure LSD, CRYSTALS 3.0 overflows with youthful vim, the sense that to settle into an old pattern is to be dead already. If you have previously loved John Vanderslice, you will hear him here instantly, whether it’s that familiar warble during “Crystals 26” or the way he cavorts with hooks. If you’ve never known him, you will instead instantly hear a mind on post-modern fire, trying like always to make sense of our modern mess. This side of John Vanderslice’s sound hid in plain sight for two decades, on records that remain essential because of those very interests; it has never sounded more full, dauntless, or thrilling than on CRYSTALS 3.0.

A seamless 19-minute sequence of melodies so memorable they belong in an ice cream truck, static bursts so meticulous they belong on a Merzbow tribute, and beats so spring-loaded they belong on a trap record, CRYSTALS 3.0 applies the unencumbered enthusiasm of vintage Vanderslice records to his  ideas about breaking old molds, about avoiding easy interpretation.

“Songwriting is inherently conservative, and I just don’t have the mindset to write something like ‘Exodus Damage’ again,” Vanderslice, now 55, says, grinning broadly in his contagious way. “I want to make music that poses more questions than it answers.”

The essential elements here are nothing unprecedented for Vanderslice. He was, after all, the sample guy in his acclaimed band of ’90s weirdos, MK Ultra, and his approach to crosshatching rhythms and hooks in playful patterns betrayed a love of hip-hop and electronica at least since 2004’s Cellar Door. During pandemic lockdowns, though, a budding fascination led him to embrace those elements unabashedly—drugs, from acid and coke to mushrooms and MDMA. After years as the songwriter who didn’t drink on tour for fear of how it might impact his craft, the spoils of a libertine Los Angeles became distinct tools, allowing him to tunnel into his creativity in distinct ways. He would build electronic trances on ecstasy or up the mushrooms on recording days, looking for unimagined connections.

During 2022, Vanderslice would often sit in his backyard studio in some pleasant psychedelic state and work, while a film—maybe something by the Maysles Brothers or Frederick Wiseman—played in the background. If something caught his ear, he’d often weave it into the music, using the distortion inherent in those decades-old documentaries to counter the rigidly clean tones of digital instruments. No context, just the serendipity of overlapping moments.

Those samples populate CRYSTALS 3.0 like reawakened ghosts, maybe guests of honor at one of the drug parties Vanderslice throws in the backyard with his partner, Maria. The whole dense little record feels like a distilled fête, its 13 overlapping tracks functioning as fragments from conversations and encounters. Bits of singing that might have fit on Pixel Revolt abut sequences that Chicks on Speed would have loved; celebrations of jungle drums run into sunken-keyboard miasmas, like an old friend pulling you aside to deliver some bad news. Vanderslice spent a year building, sorting, and stitching together these pieces; despite the brevity, you may spend just as long trying to unpack every layer, decode every secret.

Photo Courtesy: Maria Brand