The Break They Need?

They seem like unlikely techno heroes. Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland grew up in working-class Las Vegas and as teenagers put on their own dance parties wherever they could, including the local tavern.

“The only way you could get people to come dance in Las Vegas was if you sold beer,” says Kirkland, 26.

Beer bashes were a long way from the designer drug-fueled world of all-night raving that entranced England and the U.S. West Coast by the turn of the decade. But in 1990, Jordan and Kirkland had moved to the rave epicenter of L.A. to chase what was then a long-shot dream: To become a techno band.

Under the name the Crystal Method, the duo is releasing its debut album “Vegas” this week. It’s the most anticipated domestic techno album of the year--what some are billing as the American answer to the Chemical Brothers and all that other hard-rocking, hip-hopping U.K. electronic noise that is wooing the world. The group also represents the best chance of the long-overlooked West Coast “break beat” sound going over-ground (see review, Page 68).

Using synthesizers, drum machines and live guitar licks, the duo is masterful at appropriating soul-wrenching samples (Jesse Jackson’s angry “Keep hope alive”) and matching them with appropriately energetic hip-hop beats (also known as break beats or just “breaks”) and acidic synths.

What really gives the Crystal Method an edge in a music scene fast becoming cluttered with electronic next-big-things is its ability to play live--and play live well. Using a minimum of backing tracks, the group actually improvises during live shows--all the while sweating, jumping, even abusing its instruments in classic rock style.

“The music,” says Jordan, 29, “has traditionally been presented as an afterthought to the rave culture.”

This appreciation for musicianship is inbred. Jordan and Kirkland first bonded over their love of drum machines and samplers around 1989. Kirkland grew up on Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, but found a new edge in dance music as a deejay at UNLV’s student-run radio station.

Jordan was exposed to disco and soul as a kid and took that heritage to the turntables as a teen. Both became music studio engineers, which supported their act. In fact, the duo came upon the name of their group in 1992 when they told a rapper they were assigned to record that they were going to speed up the process and edit his album overnight. “Ah,” said the emcee, referring to the slang term for methamphetamine, “you’re going to use the crystal method.”

These days the duo still favors beer over the exotic, sometimes dangerous drug world that surrounds the scene. They seem down to earth--sporting skateboard shoes and short sideburns. They have responsibilities now. Having just wrapped up the album, the group paired up with industrial act Filter to remix “Vegas’ ” first track, “Trip Like I Do,” for the “Spawn” movie soundtrack. And now the two are on the road with the Electric Highway Tour, an electronic answer to Lollapalooza that will hit the Orange Pavilion in San Bernardino on Sept. 12.

And, in an affirmation of where their heads are at, Jordan and Kirkland say they are just happy to be able to make and perform music full time. “This music out here wasn’t really viable financially,” says Kirkland.

“It was totally underground.”

Indeed, the West Coast sound of break beat techno has been a strong but quiet force in the electronic pop revolution. The Chemical Brothers, for one, admit being influenced by San Francisco’s Dub Tribe, which helped pioneer the California style in 1994 with the searing underground single “Mother Earth.”

Today, other California groups are poised to follow the Crystal Method into national prominence. San Francisco’s Hardkiss collective, which produced one of America’s best techno records ever with 1995’s “Delusions of Grandeur,” recently inked a deal with Columbia Records: It will see the release of several albums from this three-member deejay crew under such monikers as Hawke and God Within.

L.A. deejay-oriented label City of Angels, which fostered the career of the Crystal Method early on, is hoping that its other local break beat artists, including Mephisto Odyssey, Simply Jeff and Uberzone, will hit just as big.

Much of the action on the West Coast, in fact, is happening with smaller, deejays-only vinyl labels such as Rampant, and Bassex, home to the L.A. group Metro, which had a hit dance single in the U.K. last year titled “To a Nation Rockin.”’

The origins of the West Coast sound are mysterious, though there are definite shades of hip-hop’s early-’80s break-dancing genre, known as “electro” (as in Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock”). While electro was influencing a group of Detroit musicians who would later coin the term “techno,” electro’s funky rhythms and synthesized melodies also took hold in California with rap acts such as the L.A. Dream Team (home of a young Dr. Dre), Egyptian Lover and DJ Unknown.

“Today’s dance artists in the Northeast and Midwest are more influenced by house and disco,” says Wade Randolph Hampton, co-owner of San Francisco’s independent Domestic Recordings label. “People in the South and Southwest were more influenced by electro.”

Indeed, where the West Coast had Egyptian Lover, the Southeast also had 2 Live Crew, a Florida group with ties to California that produced a similarly electrified, break beat-driven sound known as “Miami bass.” Today, the West Coast sound still has a Florida counterpart under the skillful hands of such Orlando rave acts as DJ Icey and Rabbit in the Moon.

Until recently, in fact, the domestic break beat sound was the domain of underground deejays such as Icey, L.A.’s Eric Davenport and San Francisco’s DJ Dan.

But the Crystal Method have no qualms about taking the sound to an international level. They’ve prepared nearly eight years to become stage stars and they don’t plan on looking back.

“We make a conscious effort not to deejay because we want people to take us seriously as a band,” Jordan says. But he stops himself and adds: “But we’ll deejay for beer money.”