Crystal Fighters

Crystal Fighters
Sebastian Pringle at Dockville Festival 2013
Background information
Origin	London, United Kingdom
Genres	Alternative dance, synthpop, folk, folktronica, indie pop, indie rock
Years active	2008–present
Labels	Zirkulo / PIAS / Atlantic
Website	www.crystalfighters.com
Members	Sebastian Pringle Gilbert Vierich Graham Dickson Additional Touring Members: Eleanor Fletcher Louise Bagan Daniel Bingham
Past members	Mimi Borelli Laure Stockley Andrea Marongiu (deceased) Nila Raja

Sebastian Pringle
Gilbert Vierich
Graham Dickson

Additional Touring Members:

Crystal Fighters are an English electronic/folk band, formed in London, United Kingdom in 2007. Their debut album, Star of Love, was released in October 2010 in the UK and was released in the US through Atlantic Records in April 2012. Their second album entitled Cave Rave was released 27 May 2013 and their third and most recent album, 'Everything Is My Family' was released on the 21st October, 2016.

Crystal Fighters consists of Sebastian Pringle (lead vocals, guitar), Gilbert Vierich (electronics, guitars, txalaparta, percussion), Graham Dickson (guitar/txalaparta), Laure Stockley (vocals) and Mimi Borelli (vocals).

Pringle, Vierich, and Dickson began making music under various guises before being joined by Laure Stockley and Mimi Borrelli. The band added Andrea Marongiu as their drummer in September 2010 at the Isle of Wight's Festival.

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 Stockley's grandfather'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.

Describing their style as "fast, mesmeric and passionate", the band play both electric and acoustic guitars, which adds lots of timbre, synths, drums, and incorporate traditional Basque instruments into their music. Many of their songs use a txalaparta, a wooden xylophone-like percussion instrument played by two people standing face-to-face. They also use the danbolin (a rope-tuned snare drum), and the txistu (a Basque pipe whistle).