Interestingly enough, I had the pleasure of seeing both Battles and Don Caballero play within a few months of each other last year at the ol’ music venue I used to help book and promote. This is significant as guitarist Ian Williams (pictured above, courtesy of Radio Free Chicago) brought his non-soloing fingertap riffage to Don Cab for years before Battles, and conventional lore suggests that the disbanding of the original Don Caballero lineup was not pretty. So the venue’s other talent buyer and I joked that Battles might have been supremely bummed if they knew we were playing the field with two of our favorite math rockers. If they read this blog, I guess they know now. Me and my big mouth.
Anyway, if you haven’t seen Battles yet, you can get a quick sample of their live show with the recently released (albeit on the other side of the world) EP Lives.
I love Battles, because I love prog rock. People who pan prog rock but also like Battles need to reexamine their opinions on music. Battles are as close to prog as they are to the often-dropped math rock tag (sans some of the corny theatrics, of course). This was reaffirmed for me during their performance with Caribou I saw at the Metro in Chicago last November. They widen the sonic space even more live, replacing the glitchiness of Mirrored with cascading swells of thick, aquatic, warm, analog astral plane journeys. They are compositionally tight and otherworldly live, just like the best proggers were. Not only do Battles sound like the music that would be pipped into the antennae of the Martian army in Vonnegut’s Sirens of Titan, but they dress the part of an extraterrestrial army by sporting nothing but the most immaculately ironed, matching, crisp white collar shirts. That, combined with the bizarre six-foot cymbal ex-Helmet drummer John Stainer crushes and Tyondai Braxton’s “throw your hands in the air” dance he does behind mountains of samplers, creates a visually strange and captivating show without reliance on video or light visuals.
Battles Lives features a taste of what you can expect of the group live. So far, Lives is only available in Japan and is not economically priced. I’m sure it will see domestic release sometime in the not-so-distant future, so in the meantime, enjoy a couple of my favorites from the EP to tide you over. I’m not posting the whole Lives EP though, because this blog is for sampling, remember. Keepin’ it real, keepin’ it legal.
MP3 :::
Battles – Bad Trails (Live)
Battles – Tonto (Live)
