Crystal Fighters

Crystal Fighters are a British/Spanish electronic band who formed in London, UK in 2007. Their debut album Star of Love was released on 4 October 2010 in the UK and will be released in the US through Atlantic Records in April 2012. The band are well known for their energetic, engaging live performances and for their unique approach to mixing culturally specific influences and instruments with a range of musical genres.Crystal Fighters' are Sebastian Pringle (lead vocals, guitar), Gilbert Vierich (electronics, guitars, txalaparta, percussion) and Graham Dickson (guitar/ txalaparta), with Laure Stockley and Mimi Borrelli (vocals). Pringle and Vierich were old friends, while Vierich and Dickson met through various parties before Vierich "forced to move to London and start to make music." The three then began making music under various guises before being joined by Stockley and Borrelli. The band now play with a live drummer, Andrea Marongiu. The group took their name Crystal Fighters’ from an unfinished opera which Stockley’s grandfather had penned during his final months of insanity. Stockley came across the manuscript while clearing out the reclusive old man’s remote home in the Basque countryside. She quickly became obsessed by the intriguing scrawls within it and shared it with the others. Captivated by its seemingly prophetic contents, the band took on the name and formed in an attempt to expand upon the wild and deranged spirit of the old man’s writings. "We started writing music around the book and learning about Basque culture and how the music and history has evolved. From there we decided we wanted to finish the opera and do a live show that would get across some of the amazing, crazy...stuff that was in this book. So we crafted this live show around the book and wrote new music based on its directions and looking at Basque music as a whole." explains Vierich.