Battles

This is Battles' sophomore album release. Nearly 30 minutes long, it's a mind-blowing masterpiece, layered and rhythmic with strict definitions and timing.

Battles is four artists that have already become legends at their work individually before forming their power quartet. John Stanier, drummer, was the drummer from Helmet and currently plays drums in Tomahawk as well. Ian Williams, guitarist/keyboardist, played guitar in Don Caballero and Storm and Stress. David Konopka, guitarist of art algebra rock band Lynx on Guitar and Tyondai Braxton, keyboarding, beat boxer, avant garde solo musician as well are the four members that make up Battles. Intelligent technical and AMAZING.

Dim Mak Releases:
DM070 Battles "B ep" 12"/CD Street Date: September 14, 2004

Press

Modern Fix 46

Updated 10/25/05
Vice
Battles scores a 9 for Minitor
Who'd-a think it? Jock metal drummer + avant guitar cool guy=the cleanest designer frug for your ears in a long time. Exchange that Emergen-C with DMT and play chess to this

Updated 6/07/05
Modern Fix 47
Review: Battles "B EP"
Words:Thom C.

Battles sounds like they would be fun to see live , each song kind of makes you want to dance. Not dancing the way most would imagine it, but dancing in a spazzy electro jerk kind of way. The mood on the "B EP" fluctuates, some songs are upbeat and at times a little mathmatical but nonetheless telling a musical story the whole time. Other tunes like "BTTLS" sounds like deranged background music for an artsy anthropological display and although that sounds bad, it's actually pretty interesting. Battles makes good use of delay and other effects to create an electro ambiance that hangs over each song like a thick early morning fog. It's as if you are in a robotic forest and some of the programmed background sounds are malfunctioning. "B EP" is a vocal-less EP but Battles use their songs to tell a story, and at times create a mood or texture more then an actual song. Battles will make you dance (sometimes), but other times they'll creep you out, x-file style!

Updated 5/25/05
Clamor March/April 2005
Review: B EP
Words:Casey Boland
If you're going to nix the vox, you better be able to play those instruments. That may seem a trivial request, yet so few instrumental bands sound capable of following it. Battles ooze prowess and ingenuity. They use the basic tools to construct an evocative piece of aural art: guitar, drums, keyboard, whatever other noise-creators in the arsenal-All this, without relying on voice or words. Your casual music consumer would be hard pressed not to consider this bands pedigree: Don Caballero (their most detectable ancestor, thanks to guitarist Ian William's unmistakable style and tone), Tomahawk, Helmet, Storm and Stress. Though they have bige shoes to fill, the band ease right in and stomp over nostalgists. Listen to the opening track "SZ2," to the way the song utalizes repeated guitar lines over a syncopated drum pattern that then dramatically shifts into an entirely different section. It's abrupt yet somehow hangs together, with guitar riffs sticking long after they've ended. "Dance" boasts a cacophonous blend of electronics into the demented guitar/drum mix. It's crazed and creative. "BTTS" is either genius or masturbation. The choice is yours, depending on whether or not you enjoy twelve minutes and twenty seconds of minimal electronic wankery that offers no rhyme nor reason nor rhythem. Math rock? Who wants to listen to the quadratic equation. This is music for risk-takers and thrill-seekers.

Updated 5/25/05
Lumpen 93
Review: B EP
Herein is a concise message towards you about a new album you must purchase right now and here is why: the battels are rythmical raiders tightened next toward everything ample like the nine inch man your goddess craves. This EP also kills muscular deadly virulent agents and bacteria in the mellow body parts that keep the sex sick and warm. Terminate the infection now.

Updated 3/16/05
CMJ August 2004
Battles :EPC number 174 on CMJ Radio 200

Updated 2/07/05
Battles named "top one to watch in '05" by Derek Evers, Editor-in-chief of Impose magazine

Updated 3/13/05
Mesh Magazine
Battles- B EP
words: Max Sidman
"Battles is comprised of drummer John Stainer (Helmet, Tomahawk), guitarist/vocalist Ian Williams (Don Caballero, guitarist/bassist David Konopka (Lynx) and keyboardist/vocalist Tyondai Braxton. Just knowing the lineup should give you a pretty good idea of what you're in for with this EP, but in case those names mean nothing to you, here's a quick rundown of the sound: At the center of it all is a tightly-wound, deliberately frantic or obviously dilatory but always flawless rhythmic backbone. Melodies come in interweaving patterns of playful guitar lines interspersed with keyboard chops and ambient fill, bass pops and other additive elements. The songs build and morph bit by bit, growing from near-experimental meanderings to mostly cohesive rock tunes with deft and subtle movement and undeniably strong results"
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Updated 2/07/05
Resonance
Battles
EP C
Monitor
Words: Steve Marchese

"We might not admit it, but we all have our jam bands of choice. For some it's the self-aggrandizing sustain of a hokey guitar solo. Others revel at a laptop jockey manufactoring endless loops of ear-shattering noise. Try to fool yourself if you must, but like Don Caballero and Storm and Stress, Battles are a jam band of the highest order, weaving intricately structured and improvised loops into a wicked wicker basket of avant-rock grandiosity. Ian Williams, the melodic guitarchitect of said bands, leads a like-minded quartet (filled by ex-Helmet and current Tomahawk metronome John Stainer, guitarist Dave Konopka and composer Tyondai Braxton) into a postmodern praxis where melodies unfold under a locked-in rhythmic backbeat. Nod your head, move your feet and try to pretend that this isn't a groove thing."


Updated 2/07/05
Battles: B EP
Dim Mak
words: Suzie Creamcheese

"An instrumental foure-piece, Battles is something like jazzy math-funk, if you can imagine it. Two guitars (one of them played by Ian Williams, formerly of Don Caballero, with whom this band shares a simmering intensity if not the rabid explosiveness), keyboard and the scientifically dilligent timekeeping of former Helmet drummer John Stainer together in Battles makes for an exploration of texture and of overlapping, repetitive melody-just really rocking. You'll want to take note of the way this band weirdly harmonizes percussion with percussive melody. An excellent addition to Battles' recent Monitor Records release EP C, this five-song EP ups the ante a bit by dramatically picking up the pace in spots (while slowing down to near stand-still in others). This EP is still the sound of a band that creates funk out of slightly imprecise melodic equations, but also that this band can do it at twice the speed we thought they could."



Updated 1/07/05
Lost At Sea.net
Battles: B EP
Rating: 7
words: Josh Zanger

"Imagine the laboratory of a mad scientist. In your mind, everywhere you look are knick-knack inventions spinning and jittering. Quirky noises- pings of metal on metal and fizzing liquids- can be heard in the background in a symphony of labor and ingenuity. It is almost as if this space is a macrocosm for the scientist's mind. The laboratory is where the genius' harebrained ideas come to life in some sort of wild physicality of sights and sounds.
The collective members of Battles act as the current-day mad scientist of music. To explain what they do and where these individuals come from is only the beginning- Ian Williams (guitar, keyboards) has played in Don Caballero and Storm and Stress, John Stainer (drums, percussion) has played in Helmet and Tomahawk, David Konopka (guitar) has played in Lynx, and Tyondai Braxton (guitar, keyboards) is best known for his solo work. What truly represents the group, though, is the fusion of individual talents and ideas that come out in their newest recording B EP on Dim Mak Records. The release is their third in recent three-month period, with Cold Sweat Records and Monitor Records puttin gout the other two albums. Members have said that this release method is meant to spread the band's exposure and not limit themselves to one label or region of the map.
'Harebrained', 'quirky', 'spinning', 'jittering'. These words are all a great start. Each one indicates movement and edge. In a roundabout manner, some of the terms even imply an insatiable attitude. Battles embodies all of these intense implications. But often it is a reposed dynamic that makes the greatest differenct for B EP.
The start of the EP is initiated with a delicate layering of sounds in Williams' signature looping guitar weaves a pattern of notes and dances to an accelerating tempo alongside the ring of the sleigh bells. This is Battles in cerebral creation mode. The writing process often makes the intense moments even greater by setting them up with a neutralization of soft sounds and experimentations.
Later during the track, a heavily distorted crunch of bass and rums pound on the musical thinktank hatch to be let free shortly before ramming it off of its hinges. Synthesizer riffs and several levels of constantly moving guitar notes fill the rest of the space in an open yet organized slow stomp groove. Soon enough, a silent break sets the table for a fury of upbeat bass/snare drum rhythms and increasingly intense melodies from the bass, keyboard and guitar
Throughout its running, B EP features mutations of sounds that are only achieved by the invention of hungry and sound-reckless musicians. The four members fiddle with loop pedals and knobs to the point at which electric guitars sound like horns and pianos, and the keyboard takes on the timbre of electric bass. However the tinkerings are entirely appropriate for what each track demands. In the creative process, the instruments are given life and they exhale personality into all five compositions that span nearly 30 minutes. This short peek of Battles will have the listener either craving more, or immediately seeking out new musical inventors.

Updated 12/03/04
Battles is Pick of the Week from the Philadelphia City Paper

Updated 11/19/04
Pitchfork Media
Battles: B EP
Dim Mak
Rating: 8.3
Words: Sam Ubl

"Battles may boast, 'We've got Ian Williams of Don Caballero on guitar', but it's a musical bait and switch: They're not math rock. In fact, the instrumental four-piece band confines itself to relatively conventional time signatures on its third EP, B, a record steeped in heavy funk and craggy post-rock. But let's not beat around the bush-- Williams is still a guitar powerhouse and, placed alongside the reliably inventive Tyondai Braxton, plus David Konopka's guitar work and John Stainer's striated drum grooves, he's infallible-- like Barry Bonds in a lineup that won't let you pitch around him.

Battles thrive on the energy of a group of musicians being dead-aim tight, synced to the point where it almost doesn't matter what they're playing. Their instruments are tuned to be as crisp and dry as possible, reducing the margin for error within their playing. Without the gloss of overtones, every misstep leaves a glaring red tracer; amazingly, such marks are rarely seen on B, and when one is, it's so faint that it could pass for a deliberate impression (a staggered flam, for instance)..."
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Updated 11/18/04

Pittsburgh City Paper
Battles: B EP
Dim Mak
Words: Dan Eldridge

"Featuring an almost too-good-to-be-true lineup of avant-experimentalists and math rock musicians- including guitarist Ian Williams, formerly of Pittsburgh's Don Caballero and Storm & Stress, and composer Tyondai Braxton- it's perhaps not surprisin that the music Battles make is anything other than complicated, richly layered and quite unlike anything that's come before. Sounding something akin to an Atari 2600 hooked up to a Marshall stack, B EP is the third in a trilogy of impossible-to-classify albums released by Battles this year. And while the first two, EP C and Tras, Fantasy, worked to solidify the band's reputation as post-noise savants with a punk-rock edge, B EP takes it a step further by creating a furious electronic force field you can almost dance to. Of course, Battles, by its very nature, is the sort of supergroup project that's bound to break up before long. Our advice? Pay close attention while you've still got the chance."
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