Album Review: Battles: EP C / B EP (2006)

I certainly never expected a Pheonix to arise from the ashes of post-rock and math-rock, genres that had started out promising a new alternative to rock music's tired formula, but wound up just as formulaic themselves. And I certainly never expected anything this good from this motley crew of wandering minstrels: guitarist/keyboardist Ian Williams of the pleasant-but-prosaic post-rockers Don Caballero, drummer John Stanier from post-hardcore band Helmet, guitarist David Konopka of the somewhat obscure Lynx, and avant soloist Tyondai Braxton. But this release, not an album but a compilation of their early EPs to prepare the world for their debut album expected sometime in September this year, shows a focus and sense of purpose far beyond their original projects. The influence of their previous work is evident from the offset - all the songs are made up of complex inter-weaving parts, often in various tricky time-signatures. But the focus of Battles' music is on melodic and compositional strength, something too frequently lost in post-and-math-rock's aimless noodling and descent into quiet-loud-quiet-VERY LOUD-quiet formula. And post-rock's vaguely apocalyptic bombast is replaced by a quite driving intensity and a menacing tension. Much of this is down to Stanier's excellent drumming - minimal, heavy and precise, he firmly roots the sound in ROCK music, whatever the time signature, even alowing elements of funk and dubb to shine through, something sacrificed to complexity in math-rock and sorely missed in most post-rock's life-less rhythmic thump. But this is very much a GROUP, and the melodic interplay between the various parts sucks the listener in and keeps them listening. Even more striking is their use of digital cut-ups and real-played sharp changes of tempo and time-signature, blurring the line between the digital cut-and-paste backing used in hip-hop and the complex multi-part prog rock suites of old - no mean feat! Thus, with its cycling themes and lurching changes of pace SZ2 comes on like 80s King Crimson filtered through This Heat's 'Horrizontal Hold', whilst BTTLS could almost be Nurse With Wound in the way that it uses a musical language of decontextualised noises of amplifier buzz and guitar strings snapping to sculpt a piece of Eno-like ambience. Hi/Lo cruises along on digital blips, whilst listening to the meticulously constructed TRAS2 deconstruct down to its component drum-kit sounds, right down to the hi-hat line, is utterly compelling.
Battles are constantly fighting to prove that you can be melodic yet complex, brutally intense yet cerebral, avant-garde yet engaging. I look forward to hearing how they fare across a full album. For now Battles have one, let's hope they are as successful in the war.