In my view, this performance was even better than the one at Glasgow. It does feel a little bit like ‘Atlas’ overshadows the rest of the gig though! ‘Leyendecker’ was also quite an impressive performance.
There seemed to be a few technical issues. For some reason Ian Williams seemed to have problems with the looping, or the volume of his guitar or something. Show opener ‘Race: Out’ was ruined at first. The three guitarists quickly alternate turns playing twice a bar, but Ian Williams was too busy fixing his problem, leaving a big gap.
The impressive thing, though, was the way the band as a whole coped with the problem. Realising the performance was a dud, they just seamlessly started again near the beginning. I guess with all that technology involved, they must be pretty used to that sort of thing and they just took it in their stride. Many people probably did not even realise there was a problem (though they might have thought it was a bit long!).
Anyway, the point of this post is that Battles played at the Electric Proms last week. Tickets sold out before Battles were even added to the bill. The headliners? Editors. A slight mismatch perhaps. The wayward experimentalism of Battles was probably a bit of a shock to the system for the poor souls!
The full performance is available to watch on the BBC website until the 4th of November. There is a taste of what I saw when Battles were faced with a problem. Dave Konopka had problems with the start of ‘Tij’. Not to worry — quick-thinking drummer John Stainer just improvised a bit. Nobody will notice!
One interesting album on the list is Dark Side of the Moon, as nominated by Cornershop’s Tjinder Singh. I was just thinking recently about how Dark Side of the Moon is probably not Pink Floyd’s best album. Then someone brought it up in a conversation I had. Now this!
But the one that really made me happy was the inclusion of Is This It by The Strokes. Ian Williams of Battles wrote a paragraph about its mediocrity. Everything he says is spot-on.
I recently wrote about how I loathe indie music. I noted that the turning-point came when I was about 15 or 16 in 2001 — the year that Is This It was released. Never was an album title so apt.
There was so much hype surrounding The Strokes, it seemed impossible to believe that they would be anything but good. But when a friend made a CD-R of the album for me, I hated it so much that I returned it!
Is This It was so bad that it actually gave me a headache. It was so unbelievably conservative, derivative and certainly anything but “alternative”. The sheer monotony of the entire album made me depressed.
While I am often willing to give an album more than one chance on the basis that repeated listens can reveal hidden treats, I have refused to listen to Is This It a second time. It was obvious that this album had absolutely nothing to offer. And I didn’t want to risk getting a migraine.
As if to top it off, Is This It — if memory serves — lasts barely more than half an hour. This makes it an absolute fucking rip-off if you buy it at a normal album price. I expect an EP to be that long. Half an hour is roughly the length of a single that is released in the pretty much ubiquitous CD1 + CD2 format.
In short, Is This It lacked breath, depth and length. The personification of one-dimensional music. The prospect that The Strokes were the future of guitar-based music absolutely horrified me. So I turned my back on it all.
At the same time I discovered bands like Broadcast and Tortoise. I spent many evenings that year exploring the Warp Records website, avidly listening to the audio clips of their releases. A door had been opened to an amazing world where exciting and innovative music was being made.
Six years on, I am still listening to exciting and innovative music released on Warp — in the shape of Battles.
I’m not much of a gigger really. In fact, since the first proper one I attended six years ago (My Vitriol, who must now rival Portishead as the slowest-working band in the world), the only other gig I’ve attended was a really awful local band in a pub. I was dragged along, and I haven’t really recovered since.
There are a few reasons for this. One of the main ones is that hardly any of the bands that I like ever play in Edinburgh. My brother says this is because Edinburgh has a 10pm “noise curfew”. WTF! It’s meant to be a city of culture, but no music is allowed in case it wakes up Tarquin. Shameful.
The trek from Kirkcaldy to Glasgow is tiring, time consuming and expensive. But I don’t think anything would have been able to prevent me from seeing what Battles are like live.
Of course, we had to endure a shite support act first. The Penpushers have four members, but only two of them ever seemed to be doing anything at any one time. (My brother pointed out that one of the members was called Obsolete — and wasn’t he just!)
The music was nothing special. I think if this was fifteen years ago, when DJ Shadow was at the height of his popularity, this would have felt fresh and maybe even exciting. Today, the sound is rather dated and underwhelming.
At one point the frontman bemoaned the lukewarm reception, calling the audience “an Edinburgh crowd”. But they deserved an Edinburgh reception. Especially since we were about to see possibly the most futuristic band around at the moment, Battles (not The Battles, as Mr Penpusher annoyingly kept calling them).
The start of the performance caught by surprise. Bassist Dave Konopka, without the other members present, appeared just to be fiddling around, preparing or practising something. Then, all of a sudden, he just turned round and hammered out four bars worth of music.
Konopka stopped playing, but the music continued in a loop. It was a loud, bassy line — the sort that you can feel as much as you can hear. It seemed vaguely familiar, but nothing I could place from Battles’s records. Then he turned round to attend to his magic box. A few button presses later, and all of a sudden the unfamiliar sound was transformed into the very familiar beginning of ‘Race: Out’.
The rest of the band arrived, and we were to be treated to an hour or so of mind-bending music and technology. And the use of technology is quite important, because this is what pushes their unique sound. A simple guitars-and-keyboards band, Battles are not.
Pitchfork seemed to think that their album, Mirrored, is nothing short of revolutionary. Also read their review of Seefeel’s Quique for a comparison of Battles’s mix of guitars and technology to what Seefeel were able to achieve 15 years ago. Battles could not have existed in their current state before today.
It is just as well that they do exist today. Ever since the likes of IDM started to sound a bit stale a few years ago, there has not been much in the way of forward-looking music. It looks as though, right on cue, Battles have come to save the day.
Five or ten years ago, Mirrored would have been one of those studio albums that is impossible to replicate in a live environment. To watch the guitars and Tyondai Braxton’s vocals being electronically manipulated like this in real time is pretty extraordinary. As you may be able to tell, I was as impressed by the technology on display at the gig as much as the music itself.
Indeed, the music itself was a little bit off-colour. Particularly at the start of the set, a few mistakes were being made. Ian Williams in particular seemed more excited by the prospect of jumping around and looking energetic than actually hitting the right key on his keyboard. For a band that is often labelled “math rock”, they seem to delight in being imprecise from time to time.
And this “math rock” band is not just about chin stroking. Infact, particularly on Mirrored, they seem to be almost anti-chin stroking. At times whimsical and humorous, Battles are not afraid to produce an unashamed crowd-pleaser such as ‘Atlas’. And ‘Atlas’ really is a crowd pleaser, with members of the audience singing along to the “whooa-aay-oooh” bit, though they were probably prohibited from singing the rest because of ambiguity as to what the rest of the lyrics actually are.
I suppose the sheer energy is part of what makes Battles awesome live. This is particularly true of their stunning drummer, John Stainer. He clearly has his admirers. One person in the crowd seemed to be there solely to see John Stainer. At one point he just randomly started chanting, “John! John! John! John! John! John! John!” I think in his head the whole crowd was chanting with him.
Unlike Williams, Stainer is so relentlessly dedicated to playing correctly that it almost defies belief. Fast, precise and intricate, it was inevitable that he would start sweating. But I have never seen somebody sweat so much in my life. By the middle of the performance he looked like he had just come out of a swimming pool.
It wasn’t just sweat either. At one point I was unfortunate enough to look up just in time to see a huge string of gob come out of his mouth. I have a feeling that, when I’m old and senile, that will be my best memory of the gig.
I was a little bit annoyed that they didn’t play what I think are the two best tracks on the album, ‘Rainbow’ and ‘Ddiamondd’, but you can’t have it all.
Battles in action: ‘Atlas’ live at Chicago Glass Bottle, 30-03-2007
Nothing against them personally, you understand. I’m sure they are perfectly nice gentlemen. But their music… oh my goodness.
Despite being ostensibly a pretty average folk-pop band, The Proclaimers are, for some reason, held up as some kind of pseudo-Gods in Scotland. Living legends, if you will. I mean, if you were to do a straw poll of Scots and asked them if they liked The Proclaimers, probably around two thirds would say ‘yes’.
Even those people who weren’t even born the last time The Proclaimers wrote a good song would say that they like them. It is a fact that, despite the fact that they are still making music today, they have had no notable new hit songs in well over a decade and a half.
But they are number 1 today due to the neverending popularity of ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’, now with some additional help from Peter Kay and Matt Lucas, a couple of once-funnymen who lamentably have both been unable to come up with a new joke for about three years.
I don’t even particularly have anything against the music of The Proclaimers. They have some quite good songs. ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)’ is among them. Whenever the song is played in a public place it is greeted with mass euphoria. And, yeah, I think it’s all right as well.
But there is one niggling thing that really, really annoys me about The Proclaimers. That thing is also one of the aspects of the duo that makes them so phenomenally popular in Scotland. But it really, really gets up my rear pipe.
The singing.
The singing. Why?
They sing with one of the most contrived accents you will ever hear, twisting every vowel out of shape to an extent that you would never hear in a normal conversation or even in any other song, even a song sung by a Scot. It’s meant to be really patriotic because they are supposedly singing with their real accents, unlike all of those other bands that sing with fakey American accents.
But The Proclaimers do not sing with their real accents. Their hometown is only around thirty minutes from where I live, but I have never in my life heard anybody talk the way The Proclaimers sing — not even The Proclaimers. I have heard The Proclaimers speaking and they actually speak with a normal accent.
If somebody came up to you and spoke with the accent that The Proclaimers use when they are singing, you would think he had special needs or something. That is why you never hear anybody talking like that. Quite why this word warping is celebrated when somebody starts singing is beyond me.
I am afraid that The Proclaimers are right at the arse end of Scottish culture. In a fair world they would be rivals with that silver guy doing the robot. They belong more in some tatty souvenir shop in some piss-stained alleyway off Princes Street than at the top of the charts.
I don’t usually listen to leaks. I’m old fashioned that way. I prefer to wait until I have the physical object in my hand before listening. As Armando Iannucci said, “there are only two things in the world that give us absolute happiness: one is unwrapping a newly bought CD.”
But for the first time I have listened to a leak. I just couldn’t stand waiting two months for the album to come out. I am just far too excited about this band to let this get away.
And what an album! Mirrored is undoubtedly the Battles that we have become familiar with over the past couple of years, but there is a really different vibe to their sound in what is technically their début album.
Battles are now a little bit cheeky, happy and bouncy. There is a little bit of a sense of humour shining through, but at the same time they have not allowed their incredible sense of how to surprise their listener to slip. Even the track titles are noticeably different. Many of them even contain actual words rather than looking like excerpts from half-remembered algebra lessons.
The album opens with the frantic ‘Race: In’, which already signals one of the major changes to the Battles sound: vocals take centre stage. Not lyrics, mind — vocals, often skewed so much that you cannot understand a word that is being said. The vocals in ‘Race: In’ sound a bit like dogs yapping.
Lead single ‘Atlas’ swiftly follows, and this is such an awesome track. There is a constant beat and a pounding, relentless bass accompanying the track throughout. Yet despite the basic foundations, here is a track that is as unpredictable as anything else Battles have come up with in the past.
It is kind of the theme of the album. It is recognisably Battles, the band that is liked by many for being so unconventional. With Mirrored, Battles have been unafraid to be as unconventional as to add seemingly conventional elements such as pounding beat and prominent vocals. But these elements are all incorporated in a ways that still surprise and reward greatly.
‘Atlas’ is a tough act to follow, but ‘Ddiamondd’ has a good shot at it. This is an utterly madcap track, with fast-paced chripy singing. If you can imagine it, the track is like a mixture between a sped-up version of Maxïmo Park’s ‘Limassol’ and Clor’s ‘Hearts on Fire’. And then comes the sped-up whistling that sounds like a messed up Seven Dwarves.
My favourite track, though, is ‘Rainbow’. It starts off really quietly with quite a basic riff. Gradually it builds up a bit of a warped streak before eventually turning into something that’s simultaneously mad and happy. It all builds up to a quite triumphant ending, like one of those emotional post-rock bands without (quite) as much pretentiousness. I just don’t know how to describe the track, I don’t even know why I’m trying. Just fantastic.
‘Rainbow’ particularly highlights the John Stainer’s idiosyncratic drumming style. Unrelenting snare drum rolls are interspersed with hi-hat rolls. Full marks to him for effort. To see just how much he puts into his drumming, check out this video of part of ‘SZ2′.
‘Snare Hanger’ is another stand-out track for me with its glitching, almost hip-hoppy drums. The track ends sounding almost like it was influenced by The Futureheads (”oh - o - oh oh!”).
Meanwhile, ‘Tij’ reminds me of Blur’s most experimental moments multiplied. This track is another one that ends interestingly. Splintered, it sounds like a beatboxer with a serious case of the hiccups.
In short, this is a shimmering, dazzlingly experimental album that isn’t afraid to blast out a good melody. I really hope this album is noticed by a lot of people, because it’s probably one of the best I’ve heard for a few years.
Already a lot of Battles’s more po-faced fans have reacted angrily to the new direction. It’s too happy, it’s not serious enough, and — ewww — vocals. I just love the fact that this is only their début album, and already there is ‘old’ Battles and ‘new’ Battles. This is a band that is clearly not scared to push boundaries of any sense, even if it seemingly risks alienating some of their more serious fans out there.
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