Battles Music

Battles' John Stanier, Ian Williams, and Dave Konopka always sound psyched to play together, but never more so than on their first entirely instrumental album, La Di Da Di. While vocals – first provided by Tyondai Braxton on their early work and by a host of collaborators on 2011's Gloss Drop – might have seemed necessary to humanize their experimentation, they're not missed on the band's third full-length. If anything, removing them gives the trio's ideas to generate sparks the way they did on Mirrored (particularly on "Tricentennial," which recalls the mischievous alien anthems of their debut) while keeping Gloss Drop's immediacy. Battles' mix of muscular drums and riffs and heady melodies and electronics has never sounded so liberated, whether on "The Yabba," a thrilling seven-minute excursion that sounds more like seven one-minute songs strung together, or on the relatively serene "Luu Le," which uses the same amount of time to close the album with a sun-dappled suite. Here and throughout La Di Da Di, the band sounds mercurial but not chaotic, with an interplay that ebbs and flows like creativity itself.

Just when I thought that folk metal didn’t really do it for me anymore; I came across the new album For Battles Once Fought from the Israelian band Arafel. Partly because the former singer from my used-to-be-number-one-band-Equilibrium, Helge Stang, became frontman of this band in 2008, I decided to give it a try. And I must say that I am happily surprised. Arafel was formed in 1997 in Israel by a few musicians who found their origins in the Soviet Union. The band started off as a black metal band, but on this new album they take a turn more towards death metal. A turn that was already noticeable in their former album, Through The Flame Of Ages. The folk influences are there, and especially the violin lines give this band a typical sound. For Battles Once Fought is also the first cd recording for the ‘new’ violin player Nasha, and she did a great job.

Battles - Mirrored (2007) {WARP CD156}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 360 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 124 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (jpg) -> 11 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2007 Warp | WARP CD156
Rock / Experimental Rock / Neo-Prog / Post-Rock / Math Rock

It's official: in 2007, it's all come full circle. Prog rock has made its way into the indie scene. Battles' Mirrored, their debut full-length after three EPs, makes that plain. Messrs. John Stanier of Helmet and Tomahawk, guitarist/keyboardist Ian Williams of Don Caballero and Storm & Stress, guitarist David Konopka of Lynx, and avant solo musician Tyondai Braxton have constructed an album that combines the best of Van Der Graaf Generator, Magma, Krautrock, and math rock, while coming up with something that stands so far out on the fringe that it is in a league of its own. That so much of this music is created via the magic of software and combined with one- or two-note keyboard and guitar patterns makes it the Philip K. Dick equivalent of modern rock.