Mirrored

by

Battles

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To say Battles has their own distinct sound would be an understatement. Some bands are in their own world. Battles is in their own galaxy. A galaxy ruled by mechanical sounding vocals, deep percussion, keyboards that sound like guitars, and guitars that sound like keyboards. It's not quite the Milky Way. It sounds like Turing Machine filtered through a wormhole or something. Really cool, really freaky stuff. And it's the good kind of freaky, not the "weird for the sake of weird" kind. Well, maybe some of it is weird for weird's sake. But it's enjoyable nonetheless.

At first, I wasn't too keen on this. You need to slowly let it tunnel into your consciousness over the course of a few listens. The longer songs (Atlas, Tonto, Rainbow, Tij) are the highlights here, with the other songs seeming more like science experiments as opposed to fully fleshed out songs, with perhaps a couple of exceptions. But those 4 songs, all clocking in at over 7 minutes, are the ones you'll listen to the most when you're not playing through the whole record.

I've played this album for a lot of my friends and none of them seem to know quite what to make of it. Only one flat out told me they didn't like it, but none went nuts over it either. They seemed equal parts intrigued and confused more then anything else. So take that however you want to. All I know is I keep listening to it and enjoying it. It's different, that's for sure. Not for everybody, but I would definitely keep your eye on these fellows either way. I'll never be one to criticize a band for taking chances and doing something different, and Battles is certainly one of those bands.

On Mirrored Battles synthesizes the ferocity, structural minimalism and experimentation of punk/post punk with the virtuosic musicianship and erudite intellectualism of art-rock. To give you some idea of what Mirrored sounds like, try to imagine the sharp, taut sound of early Wire combined with the musicianship and rigid structural complexity of early 80s King Crimson (Discipline, Beat, Three or a Perfect Pair) presented in an ultra-modern (futuristic?) digitally processed format. If that seems difficult to wrap your brain around, well, it is. To me Mirrored sounds sort of like Robots attempting to perform human-sounding music (the vocals are processed, and the lyrics are usually indecipherable).

While Mirrored seems brilliant in conception the reality is only compelling on a detached intellectual level. Battles are intelligent, creative, and technically accomplished, but seem emotionally distant because the emphasis is almost entirely on structure and rhythm; Mirrored has elements of wit, humor, and energy, but is almost completely devoid of recognizable human sentiment. Battles do create unique and compelling grooves on the best tracks (Atlas, Ddiamondd, Leyendecker), but their aesthetic becomes tedious over the course of a 50 min album. Apart from the few distinct songs most tracks are repetitive and interchangeable.

It's evident that Battles have a unique musical chemistry and aesthetic, and their ability to explore seems almost infinite. But their tremendous potential is only partially realized on Mirrored. They must learn to infuse more humanity and more direct emotional zeal into their intriguing structures before they can realize the truly great album Mirrored isn't.