Battles weds sci-fi electro and brutal punk into a new brand of progressive rock
The four men in Battles sweat, squirm and thrash their instruments on stage. At times they sound like a punk band, at others they resemble four men trapped in a machine of their own making as rhythm loops, electronic noises and dirty distortion flood the environment. The fusion of the visceral and the technical, the hardcore past and the sci-fi future, is what makes the Brooklyn quartet go, and why the band’s full-length debut, “Mirrored” (Warp), is one of the year’s most talked-about and justly praised albums.
“It’s a bit complicated,” says multi-instrumentalist Ian Williams with a laugh. “You’re using two side of the brain all the time: the technical, everything-correct side, versus the just-feeling-the-music side. Things still go wrong all the time because we have so many silly little gadgets on stage. That’s part of the thrill of our live show --- just getting through it without anything going wrong.”
The band’s performance at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park last summer was a prime example. Battles had a crowd of 15,000 people in a frenzy before technical glitches briefly stalled the set, only to start back up again and wind up with a flourish.