Who would’ve thunk it, eh? Battles, our finest post-everything future-funk band, and the people responsible for a recent slew of copycat unpop bands, headlining in front of 1,600 people just two years after they struggled to get a three quarters-full Luminaire grooving tentatively to their proggy, rhythmic bleeping. But now that people have solved their maths rock puzzle, which consists of muchos grooving, Battles don’t sound like such an unfriendly proposition after all. And there’s almost no chance, unless Tyondai Braxton is caught short, of being hit in the face by a Battles member’s piss, something that might have happened when drummer John Stanier last played the Astoria.
‘It was with Tomahawk. I can’t say too much, but there was a bad incident. Bad, but funny. The people at that show will know what I’m talking about,’ says Stanier. Refusing to elaborate, in unexpectedly scaredy-cat fashion, we’re duly teased into some Googling. Ironically, Stanier pins Battles’ success on the collapse of the industry and the rise of the web as a music library, which helps get people into the nu-leftfield. Tonight, the scene is represented by Battles, Brooklyn’s Dirty Projectors and a band we can’t praise more highly, ambient rockers Fuck Buttons.
But the web also told us what we think Stanier refused to reveal. When Tomahawk played the Astoria in 2002, frontman Mike Patton, upset at his treatment by a security man, whipped out a prosthetic – ahem – appendage, and pretended (or did he?) to have a wee on the offending man. You won’t see any cock tonight, but the music will be the nuts. Further listening: www.tiny.cc/PigDk
