Music

Just this once, let’s try leaving the reviewing to the band itself. NYC quartet Battles – whose players
have done time with Helmet, Don Caballero, Tomahawk and Lynx – describe their music thus: ‘Beep, boop, boop, crash, beep, loop, fwount, bang, beep, boop, loop, sing, sing, beep, boop, thanks – you’ve been a wonderful audience’. Not hugely helpful, true, but it does show that even cultish, avant-rock extremists have both self-awareness and a sense of humour.

There are two popular misconceptions of these avant-garde experimentalists:

1) their music is so cerebral as to refuse all emotional connectivity, to the point where it may as well be patched directly into the listener’s synapses; 2) basically, they revel in unlistenable noise. For those who still believe this after listening to Battles’ debut, there really is no hope. ‘Mirrored’ is aptly titled, its precision-locked, prismatic surfaces reflecting and refracting elements of hardcore, free jazz, math/post-rock, prog, doom metal, Krautrock, illbient soundscaping, minimal-techno and musique-concrete. That its thrilling physicality and brutal minimalism admit not only malevolently groovy epic ‘Atlas’, but also flickering beauty ‘Leyendecker’ is a testament to Battles’ titanic talent. The post-everything dawn breaks here.