Battles - Mirrored (Warp)
4/5
By: Charlie Potter
As Jane Austen might have once said, "the thing about Battles, is they are a rather silly band."
Let's start with dealing with all the nonsense that people have said about Battles. First off, they're not avant garde extremists. To call them that's ridiculous, but it's something I've read in many articles, clearly written by people who are a little bit backward. Battles are a band who use guitars, and drums, and sing and stuff. This isn't particularly difficult or challenging music.
One of the other things that people say about this band is that they're a bunch of pretentious show offs. Well, we'll give you that. They are show offs. They play their guitars and their keyboards at the same time and the drummer has a really high up cymbal on his kit for no discernable reason. But they're not pretentious, quite the opposite - they add these little flourishes because it's what they themselves would want to see in a band.
So what about this recording? Well, I'd have to say I would have liked to have heard some more big bucks go in to it. If this has actually happened, you can't tell. The recording is all a bit too echo-filled, and sounds largely like the band have literally recorded themselves playing with all the room ambience that was present on the day and left it at that. In terms of the drums, a lot of the high hat sounds come across as if he's hitting a shopping basket with a log, and the tom sounds are as if they were recorded on the other side of the room from the rest of the drum kit. This at times does give a very appealing edge to the rhythms and a slightly more colossal booming bass, but at others it can make it sound a bit rough. The guitar tracks have been recorded with a lot of reverb, or with too much room ambience, yet either way what I think they should have done is recorded perfectly close, then put some reverb on, but also dampen the high end so as to give the best of both worlds.
Moan over. It has to be said that all of these problems are overcome when the volume is turned up, which is the ideal way to listen to 'Mirrored' anyway, but the proof of my point is most effectively given when you hold this record up alongside the bands they have been associated with or associate themselves with, bands such as Animal Collective or Black Dice. Both of these bands have flawlessly sophisticated recordings, and it's a shame that Battles have distanced themselves from these contemporaries with this, a record that's sadly, sonically at least, less than perfect.
The actual material however is a different story altogether. I would have to say, and I only say this because Battles are a band that I can see being a stepping stone for some people in to more dissonant music, that they are at first a bit boring, and often will tease you for long lengths. Most of the tracks here are centred around one riff and often go on for more than five minutes. But the pay off. Oh the pay off. One of the obvious triumphs on this album is that the melodies creep into your brain and settle there, and whilst there they entertain you excellently - they give you space when you need it, they help you do the housework, they give you something to whistle when your at work.
Other things which jump out from this recording are the exciting and effective noodlings with various technology. We're entering the true dawn of the delay pedal here, and I can't wait - those little boxes that make stuff repeat seem to have opened up so many doors in the current music world and have sent a lot of contemporary experimental musicians spinning out in a thousand directions. I look forward to a time when people accept that being good with a delay unit is like being good with any other instrument. I'm a big fan of Battles' shameless utilisation of pitch pedals, and goodness knows how they came to have so much fun with sampling their own live guitar sounds through a keyboard, but well done lads - you've got us thinking.
But the real thing, the thing I've really got to hand to Battles and the thing that surprised me and brought me the most joy is, almost ironically, their use of chords and chord resolves. One of my favourite examples of this is comes in 'Tij'. There's something incredibly exciting about this track as somehow it really feels like a big stride in to the future, and I suppose in that respect the band could indeed be regarded as being avant garde. But still, this isn't exactly Stockhausen, is it? Listen to the chorus on 'Atlas'!
Slow burner of the album, the one which will probably be my next favourite, is 'Tonto', although I do have a soft spot for 'Bad Trils', the track where you can hear just how sonically friendly Battles are with Black Dice. Indeed nearly all the tracks have something special to be said about them - the only vague problem comes with the shorter tracks 'Prisismism' and 'Snare Hanger', compositions which don't really sound like finished tracks and are possibly merely there for the structure they give the record - to make your attention wane before hitting you with the fantastic power of 'Tij'.
This week should be a big week for Battles what with having major UK shows and releasing a great album. Like never before people will be able to closely scrutinise whether all that one handed guitar playing whilst also bashing a keyboard stuff has anything to do with what is on the CD. And as for the rumours of live guitar sampling, who knows...
Watch the video to 'Atlas' HERE.
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