i have battles in my life

I may pick Battles‘ “Atlas” as my best album of 2007 (over Feist) if only because it’s made me think more than any other album in recent memory.

Apparently it’s done the same for many other music journalists as well, and they’ve spawned the best articles, quotes and videos about them I’ve seen in a long long time.

Here is “Atlas” deconstructed in Esquire.

Intro 0:00-0:43
Drummer John Stanier begins the main beat, “Schaffel,” on the low tom-tom. Dave Konopka counters with a bass loop, piling three notes on top of one another. Tyondai Braxton (right) joins in with a digital loop called “Bath Turtle,” built of beat-boxed bass, drums, high hats, and snares. Ian Williams joins the alliance, playing guitar with his left hand, keyboard with his right.

Here is a story in The Australian about the band’s songwriting process:

Math rock is definitely a leading factor in Battles’ sound. There is no principal songwriter in the quartet, and they don’t jam. Instead they all write down themes on large sheets of art paper hanging in their rehearsal space, which they then choose to either clash together, use as call-response parts, or play in a progression as simple as A, B then C.

(In The Argus, drummer John Stanier explained it as such:)

“We have these giant pieces of paper that we put on the walls, and we give every part of the song a really weird, extravagant name,” explains Stanier.
“So for Atlas there’s sections labelled Angelica Houston, French Mime, Gay Paris – hundreds and hundreds of names, just the first thing that came into to our minds when we first played it. Our songs are almost like mini-plays anyway, so it helps us to remember by thinking of it as a story.”

The most interesting thing to me is how the band blew me away in real time. I saw them LIVE before I ever heard the album, and it was intense and visceral — such skill, such mastery over gadgets, and yet so much palpable emotion still! (These are photos I took of the band at Pitchfork festival.)

In the same story, Stanier adds:

Stanier says. “Everything we’re doing is done live. We have laptops on stage so it would be very easy to assume that there’s lots of button-pushing, but there are no sequences, no samples.

“I think that’s important ‘cos it makes us so much more human, so much more emotional. It’s man controlling machine rather than machine controlling man.”

In Drowned in Sound, Tyondai Braxton had this to say about the way their music affects the audience:

“I feel that the way we make music, there’s a neutrality to it. The music is not telling you how to feel, it’s really just reflective of yourself. You can say, ‘oh, I like that part’, because that beat is cool and you happen to be a hip-hop fan… You can interpret the band in any way if you listen hard enough, because the music’s not telling you what style it is. You draw your own conclusions.

Which is great, because obscure artists (Tim Hawkinson), great composers (Igor Stravinsky) and the like inform Battles’ music, as this Guardian story reports. And then, there’s the zen of absence. It’s something only intelligent musicians ever think of.

Silence: “Everyone needs to learn how to play this instrument. For every note you pluck, learn how to mute it for the same amount of time. We’re not some hippies on a mission to mellow out the world but, if anything, silence gives strength to sound.”

I was speculating with a friend, also a Battles aficionado, about what drugs these guys were ON when they were making their music. He swears “Bad Trails” is like a meth song, a white knuckle fisted song. I think they’re shroom heads, or at least use pot, because nothing about meth opens your mind up the way Battles songs do. But here’s Braxton refuting that in a Fader interview, while talking about what the band does in their off time (play hackeysack):

I don’t smoke pot and I don’t wear Birkenstocks, so it might throw people off to see me hack.

Here are lyrics to “Atlas”

PEOPLE WONT BE PEOPLE WHEN THEY HEAR THIS SOUND
THAT’S BEEN GLOWING IN THE DARK AT THE EDGE OF TOWN
PEOPLE WONT BE PEOPLE, NO
THE PEOPLE WONT BE PEOPLE WHEN THEY HEAR THIS SOUND
WONT YOU SHOW ME WHAT BEGINS AT THE EDGE OF TOWN

THE SINGER IS A CROOK
THE SINGER IS A CROOK
THE SINGER IS A CROOK
THE SINGER IS A CROOK
THE KITCHEN IS THE COOK
THE SCISSORS ARE THE BARBERS
THE SINGER IS A CROOK
THE CHORUS, FULL OF ACTORS

*THE CHORUS DOESN’T MATTER (LAST VERSE)