Let's anticipate the monument of 2007, Battles "Mirrored"

I was at the Boston show. What really struck me is how exhausting their music is to play--they're never at rest onstage, always making loops and setting up the next parts of songs. When they really got going it was pretty incredible (Race: Out as the opener really killed), but I thought one or two songs (ATLAS) were better on the record than they were live. Stanier is just unbelievable though, he's a machine.

If anything breaks down, he just keeps going without ever perceptibly getting off beat. Solid!

Agreed on race:out, at the time it jumps back into the main guitar part you get that moment of recognition from earlier in the show/album and it's a great bookend.

way late on this, but boy is it good. total late/mid 90s math rock dudes trying to make "my life in the bush of ghosts" but better than that sounds....hella tried to do some shit like this but this does it way way better...takes all the don cab and goes disco which is great....love all the electronic vocals and other studio fuckery...reminds me once again why TV on the Radio, as much as i wanted to like them is just mediocre (that and the new blonde redhead)...

real great awesome album cover. kind of reminds me of, which probably isn't bad ref. either for this:

http://www.progreviews.com/reviews/images/FE-NP.jpg

I didn't listen for agres either, M@tt. But I totally love it.

i like Mirrored ok, but i must say: worst car music ever

this reminds me of neither fripp/eno, byrne/eno, blonde redhead, or tv on the radio, wtf are you on about?

this is a good gym album.

it doesn't really sound like those. it reminds me of if a math rock band kinda took the idea of sounding like bush of ghosts or something, that just came into my head when i heard it. it sounds like itself.

it reminds me of what i wished tv on the radio sounds like.

it doesn't sound like blonde redhead, i was just saying that was another kinda arty produced rock record this year that reminded me of why i don't like tv on the radio so much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LLAN29W-4w

the singing on it sounds stupid. anyway, there are too many people making "post rock" style stuff now, it's become a formula. listen to trans am's "surrender to the night" instead.

it would be awesome if they could afford to bring crazy, synched lights like that on tour.

I thought I'd like this, but didn't. Atlas is OK.

I think this album is pretty boss.

BAN MAX R

Boss! You're taking me back to 7th grade (if not a bit earlier).

there are too many people making "post rock" style stuff now, it's become a formula

lol 1997

I *still* haven't heard Mirrored which is very poor of me really but WRT Trans Am, they were one of the most disappointing live bands I can recall seeing, whereas Battles have been utterly on point every time I've clocked 'em and at one performance in particular (Green Man headline set) completely floored me

i think trans am went a bit shit after STTN, anyway.

I prefer to listen to Chk Chk Chk.

http://www.hollywoodstandups.com/images/homerIntense.jpg

don't get me started on them.

you are an idiot..

ok. sorry, they are great.

#1 battles is not post rock

#2 battles has a formula, but it is unique and not derivative of post-rock a la late 90s trans am

#3 hi you are an idiot

it's kind of similar.

it would be better if they sounded like trans am.

oh--trans am had three guitar players, two of which played keyboard simultaneously, heavy use of digital delay and repetitive loops?

i don't know from "post-rock" but he's right about the vocals.

i thought post-rock was just shorthand for "some chicago bullshit" anyway

c'mon, battles wouldn't exist without all that stuff like tortoise. you know it.

let's not even get into what is post rock and what isn't. just know that battles is not derivative on 90s post rock. if anything it is derivative of 90s MATH ROCK. like don caballero, of which ian williams was a member.

Battles have their own sound (sure it's not unprecedented or anything, but wtf).

wikipedia says your both right. xpost

what the fuck does wikipedia have to do with this. i know what trans am sounds like, and where they came from, and i know the context in which battles exists.

You could just say they're "experimental," cuz they look at their equipment like its test tubes and beakers with steam coming out of them.

i though math rock was just another press term for post rock and that the musicians involved thought they were both bullshit anyway.

Wrong, right respectively

Heads up: I did a track-by-track breakdown with Battles on PTW.

http://www.paperthinwalls.com/listeningparty/index?id=47

Holy crap, giving this a really good listen now and it just gets better every time. I'm coming to appreciate this record more and more in light of the 2008 albums poll. It's a brilliant, fun and original artistic statement, made with great musical sophistication and wit, and not a little complexity, and yet somehow it garnered widespread public appreciation. Nick Southall made some good points in his review of it, about it being representative of a machination of rock'n'roll, a total sublimation into the electronic and the mechanical of ideas that could only come from thinking, artful humans within a rock context. It's got so much up its sleeves, all of it somehow both alien and thrillingly primal. Really awesome record.

you seen them live, lj? They are braw.

like so much better than the record.

really would like to, haven't

Also, no mention of "Tonto" on this thread, wtf

like, it might even be my favourite track (Rainbow notwithstanding)

oh man, this albummmmmm

feels like some sort of spiritual homecoming, listening to it now and feelin' them scales drop

yes it's still good and yes tonto and rainbow are probably my favorite tracks too, but maybe that's not a very challenging opinion

I'm not trying to be challopsin', I'm just feelin' love

What review?

The main thing about this album, to me, is that it proves how weak 2008 was for music.

Starts really well but I've always found myself getting bored by about two-thirds in, there's a big sag in quality.

Like most albums, aye, it is too long. A taut 40 minutes is always preferable to an indulgent 50.

Que Louis.

Nick, I think I mean "your comments on the 65DOS thread" which I somehow have remembered as a review.

"Bad Trails" is perhaps a moment where the album loses a bit of momentum, without that song it'd be even tauter and more manageable; the (awesome) slow bit at the end of "Rainbow" drags back on the throttle enough for the 1-2 punch of Prismism/Snare Hangar to suddenly bust through with guns blazing afterwards. That's the only change I'd make. Maybe I'd get rid of "Prismism" too, but it seems to be on the record for a good reason, i.e. to blindside the listener.

And yeah, music in 2008 hasn't been particularly great; there have been no grand, unifying, wildly popular "true art-rock" records. Youthmovies' Good Nature has the quality (if not quite the complexity and otherworldly groove of Battles) to have been that record, but nobody really gave it the time of day. Not sure if Late Of The Pier count as "art-rock".

Art-rock is a stupid term that means nothing, anything qualifies.

It's my definition of the term. About the best I can do to describe music with these ambitions.

Oh, and Volcano's Paperwork was also good enough to manoeuvre the more experimental side of popular music into the limelight...didn't happen.