Battles "Mirrored" (Warp)
By Lucas Salg
Monday. May 21, 12:03 AM
Welcome, finally, to the future.

When I was a little kid and 2007 was a couple of decades away, I had imagined things would turn out differently: flying cars, teleportation machines, time travel, and people wearing fluorescent moon suits. How disappointed I was (and still am) to have that year arrive and none of it has come to fruition. I’m still driving a piece of shit car, I can’t teleport anywhere, and I’m wearing a hoodie and jeans. The future isn’t at all what it was cracked up to be.

Same goes for the world of music. So much of it is distressingly throwaway, packaged, and engineered crassly to maximize profit at the expense of any real artistic nourishment. Bands are routinely hyped as the next big whatever for doing little more than repackaging what has already been sold to us countless times. And you can probably count on one hand the number of musicians out there who, in the year of 2007, are seriously pushing boundaries and treading new paths, and making music that actually sounds like, you know, the future.

Which is why I’m so blown away by Battles.

Mirrored, the band’s debut full length for Warp, is astonishing in its vision and execution: breathtaking, really. In 52 minutes, not one moment, not one measure or even one note sounds like anything we’ve come to expect out of modern music. It just doesn’t even seem possible that this record came from Earth. It’s that weird: and that good.

Initially touted as a sort of math-rock supergroup, Battles boast among its ranks guitarist Ian Williams (ex-Don Caballero) and guitarist/bassist Dave Konopka (ex-Lynx), as well as the percussion genius of John Stanier (Tomahwak, ex-Helmet). Rounding out the group is Tyondai Braxton, formerly an avant-garde solo musician, who plays a host of instruments as well as contributing “vocals” (more on that in a bit). A formidable pedigree, to be certain, but a tag like “math-rock supergroup” sells this incredible band tragically short.

Battles released a few haphazard EPs over the last couple of years that achieved a jarring blend of mechanical uber-prog and free-form noise that was promising, if not fully engaging. The arrival of Mirrored proves they’ve not only tightened up and gotten better at songwriting, they’ve goddamn near given birth to a whole new form of music. Although those robotic grooves and weird time signatures still play a part in Battles’ plan of attack, the new Battles is much more organic and warm, capable of producing music that is teeming with life, thrillingly alive, if alien in nature. Although this could loosely be classified as “experimental” music, Battles have one hell of an ace up their sleeves: underneath all the crazy shit, they’re writing great songs.

Mirrored pursues a sort of do-everything-wrong aesthetic that somehow manages to do everything right. None of the instruments are played normally. Only the drums come through unscathed: everything else is digitally or otherwise manipulated until it barely resembles anything of this galaxy. Forefront in this new style of writing are Tyondai Braxton’s otherworldly vocal contributions: not only are the melodies themselves completely alien, but they sound like Justin Timberlake being sucked into the seventh dimension. Admittedly, they take a bit of getting used to. But they are invaluable to the music, and they grow on you pretty fast. The rest of the band work on creating loops and melodies that effortlessly flow from pinpoint accuracy to thunderous maelstroms of sound.

If opener “Race: In,” with its maniacally convoluted drum patterns from Stanier (who gives as flawless a drum performance on this record as I’ve ever heard) and vaulting melodies, doesn’t rope you in, just wait until you hear “Atlas.” Already released in truncated form as the first single, this demented, pounding, Chipmunk battle hymn is the most diabolically catchy and weird piece of music I’ve heard possibly in my entire lifetime. Braxton’s vocal hook is undeniable and will undoubtedly lodge itself into your brain. The song keeps creating amazing new loops as it goes along, collapsing and expanding while Stanier’s unshakable rhythm keeps marching onward, like a robot deconstructing and rebuilding itself while in motion. You may find yourself hitting repeat about 12 billion times on this song before you even get to the rest of the album.

Thankfully, the remainder of Mirrored is as unforgettable as that track. Each song is wildly different, but still a part of their Neptunian math-funk M.O. This is not necessarily an easy album to digest, and it may take more than one spin to realize the magnitude of what Battles are accomplishing here. But I’ll be damned if this isn’t the most important album of the last few years, and if that sounds like typical music-review hyperbole, you obviously just haven’t listened to it yet. Disturbing, strange, hilarious, challenging, frightening, completely unique, and absolutely indispensable, Mirrored is the coolest record in ages. Welcome, finally, to the future.
www.bttls.com
www.warprecords.com

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Lucas Salg

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