Review: Battles "Mirrored"

On their myspace page, Battles refers to the sound of their album as, “beep, boop, boop, crash, beep, loop, fwount, bang, beep, boop, loop, sing, sing, beep, boop, thanks you've been a wonderful audience.” That’s basically the best way to describe their sound. The first full-length album from the collaborative works of Don Caballero, Lynx, and Helmet is more than the “math rock” determined label. Mirrored, if anything, is a show of miscellaneous noises one hears after listening to an album too many times.

Don’t know what I’m talking about? Ok. Perhaps you are listening to your favorite album of all time (hard to pinpoint, I know) and all of a sudden, you realize there’s a back-up singer in the third track or maybe a high E that you never heard before in the final guitar solo. If you were to put together all those random sounds and add a steady drumbeat, you could probably mimic the sound of Battles.

Of course, vocals are completely new on this album. Battles’ previous EPs do not include any lead singer-like qualities. However, I doubt that vocals mean understandable lyrics. While listening to tracks like “Ddiamondd” or even on their single “Atlas,” there seems to be no discernable understanding of what vocalist Tyondai Braxton is saying. His choice of words rather blends within the music than stand out from it.

But that is precisely the point of the entire album. Instead of highlighting the best sounds like a guitar solo or a leading vocal, Mirrored defies the idea of band elitism and basically gives everyone (Dave Konopka, Ian Williams, Tyondai Braxton, and John Stanier) a chance. The eleven-tracked album is the remnants of Phil Spector’s “wall of sound” theory. Instead of putting a few violinists, guitarists, and drummers in the same room together, Battles can add layer upon layer of sound without infringing on the sounds of other sounds. Like I said before, it’s those miscellaneous noises you hear off an album you never notice the first hundred times. Except now when you listen to it, there’s always something new.


PS: If you want their new album, it comes out in May 2007. Battles Myspace page has some of their stuff for you to listen. You can also check my sourcing there if you want, you crazy copyright nazis.