Few acts have had the kind of impact that has been experienced by Ken Jordan and Scott Kirkland of The Crystal Method. After a chance encounter, the two combined to create one of the most successful partnerships in dance music today. They have released several studio albums to date that have gained them mass exposure and an ever-expanding fanbase, including last year's smash Legion Of Boom. Hits like "Busy Child," "Keep Hope Alive" and "Name Of The Game" can be found on mainstream radio and in DJ crates across the country. Their music has been included in numerous movies and commercials and they have remixed everyone from Garbage and P.O.D. to the Smashing Pumpkins, New Order and The Doors.

While widely known for their live shows, productions, and remixes, they can rock the house with a set of decks too. The latest addition to their immense body of work is the Community Service II release, which finds the guys once again manning the tables for an electrified mix that is loaded with the kind of tracks that you have come to expect from The Crystal Method.

Earlier this year while on a tour stop at House Of Blues in Orlando with Fatboy Slim, the guys took some time to answer a few questions about the Community Service name, their approach to producing albums, and future plans for TCM.

With this Community Service album and with the Community Service concept, can you explain what it is? Where it comes from?

Ken: Well, um, it's not a typical mix CD. The Community Service name goes way back to when we did a tour in 1998, us and...

Scott: Orbital, and Lo-Fidelity All-Stars.

Ken: Lo-Fidelity All-Stars, that's right. It's kind of like giving back to the underground, like electronic dance community. The name is also a sort of little play on being in jail once. With our mix CDs, we are really heavily involved. Either with new tracks of ours, new remixes we've done for people, new remixes people have done for us of our songs. And then a few songs that we like, ya know, spinning out at clubs. So we keep it very close to an artist album within the confines of being a mixed CD.

How important do you think it is with a mix project for people like yourselves, who are more well known for being "electronic musicians" do you feel its important include a lot of your remixes, like with The Doors track on CSII?

Scott: When we do these we had a lot of remixes from the first one, the Rage Against The Machine remix, the Garbage remix, and a P.O.D. remix. You know and remixes that people did for us. You know it was kind of a combination of a lot of rarities and things we had been listening to, so you know we wanted to do something special for this instead of just licensing a bunch of tracks that we were listening to, we went and did these two remixes to have them especially for our mixed CD and them licensed some tracks, like we got a mix of "Keep It Alive" done by JDS. So we wanted to bring some things in and do some stuff of our own, ya know, to make it special.

Going into this album, did you have a track or idea of where you wanted to go with the album taking into account things like your recent Grammy nomination and the success of "Born Too Slow?"

Ken: Yeah. Every time we do a new album, we always try to make it unique. It's just the nature of it being mixed CD, more of a club record. No matter what, it's going to sound a lot different from Legion Of Boom. Our studio albums are always, you know, things that you can take home and listen to on your own. You know, separate songs and we try to create a mood, they're more like concept albums than a club record. But the mixed albums with the tracks all mixed together are pretty much high energy stuff. It's good for the dance floor, but you can listen to it anywhere.

How does the work between you go when working out the mixed album and how you want the tracks to run?

Scott: It depends on the songs we had licensed. We had about 20 sings that we wanted to have access to and then once we had them all together it was just a matter of finding which ones worked well together. It's really what you do with a normal DJ set, you know. Based on top and the way one song ends and another begins. Obviously, there's not so many tempos, so you can stretch things a bit to make the songs different. Those that sound better together, go together. You know, it takes a little time. The majority of the time is spent finding the mixes in the songs, the tracks that, you know, make a good compilation.

How long does this take for you? How long were you working on this album?

Scott: Well, we started talking about it, somewhere in the summer of last year, late summer. And then we had a date of an early-spring release so near the end of the year then we really started thinking about the songs. And then we were still getting CD-r's in two or three days before we were finished. We wanted to keep it as fresh as possible and knowing that there is sort of an extended time between when we finish, get it turned in, and then put out

Ken: Yeah, the actual work on it was probably .when we started working on the Doors remix. Maybe fall of last year, it's pretty steady work on it since then. But we try not to uh, with the remix stuff, we can take our time with that, but we don't like deciding on the other tracks. The tracks that don't have anything to do with us until the last minute, because we don 't want them to be old by the time the record comes out.

When you're looking at putting together a TCM DJ mixed albums versus a studio album, how does that work differently?

(Both laugh.)

Scott: Well, a lot less production. It's a whole different world just showing up with records. You know, obviously, we try to get the venues right and make sure that that the promoters are people that understand the crowd. You still have to put time into the pre-tour scheduling and knowing the right cities and the right people to play with. The same energy goes into that on both the live and the DJ tours. But as far as production-wise, the last we came to this venue on the last tour. We had a semi full of gear and busload of guys working with us. But, you know, each one of them are fun in their own way.

When you are doing a tour like the CSII tour, do you feel any pressure the recognizable tracks?

Ken: Yeah, well you still want to play some more familiar things. But, we mainly concentrate on newer stuff and new things off of this mixed CD when we are playing dates to support this one.

Do you have a favorite out of the new stuff? Anything that have done more than you would have initially expected?

Scott: Yeah, well, The Doors mix sounds good out. We just the white label vinyl in on that one. It's like a sampler of that mix, the New Order mix, and Hyper's mix of "Bound Too Long." Usually by about the fourth or fifth show, we've got a good sequence of songs that we want to play and we may mix others in every one in awhile.

Who would be on your list of "I haven't worked with them yet, but I'd like to."

Ken: Well, you know, we are always talking about maybe working with PJ Harvey. I don't know.

Scott: It was cool getting to work, working on that New Order track. We'd love to get some of those, not that it's ever going to happen, but The Who or Led Zeppelin tracks.

Ken: Yeah, multi-tracks from Led Zeppelin would be nice.

What's next following the CSII tour? Another album? New tracks? Time off?

Ken: Well, we'll start working on some album tracks. But we also maybe want to do some music for a new video game, maybe some film score work. Definitely the album, but maybe some other things as well.

Have you guys been approached to do anything?

Ken: Yeah, we get approached all the time, but it's never like we're sitting around at home with nothing to do. It seems like we are always like five projects behind or we've got the next three months planned out. Or we're out of town or something. It's hard to schedule stuff like that, but we're gonna try.

-- interview by Shawn Wallace