Untitled Document
In his essay-cum-manifesto “The Fullness of
Time,” the composer Carl Nielsen cautioned against the pursuit of
novelty for its own sake: “. . . [T]he smaller and slenderer the
talent, the more careful must it be to abstain from seeking great
originality. Nothing in all art is as painful as unsuccessful originality.
It is like the twisted grimaces of vanity.” Some 80 years later, Nielsen’s
words are more relevant than ever; in fact, they should be inscribed over
the doorways of boutique record labels, embroidered on guitar straps,
tattooed on the foreheads of ADD-addled music writers. The twisted grimaces
of vanity are everywhere, dreary bulletins from a never-ending campaign of
uglification. To pronounce something sick is high praise; to call something
pretty is a major diss. Originality (or, in most cases, its venal
simulacrum) is the hipster’s religion, the first commandment of which
might be “It’s better to offend than to entertain.”
I have no idea what Nielsen would have thought of
Battles, but I’ll confess that recent chatter about the band’s
great originality set off my naked-emperor radar big-time. Mirrored, the New York
City-based quartet’s first full-length, has utterly beguiled key
segments of the indiescenti: Pitchforkmedia.com gave it an
almost-unprecedented 9.1 rating, Stylus.com a straight-up A. It
didn’t hurt, of course, that Battles has cred out the wazoo. A
supergroup of sorts, its lineup boasts Tyondai Braxton, the
experimental-electronicist son of free-jazz heavy Anthony Braxton, along
with Ian Williams, Dave Konopka, and John Stanier, veterans of Don
Caballero, Lynx, and Helmet, respectively. Plus, Battles is signed to Warp,
one of those cachet-over-cash labels whose imprimatur means everything to
certain anticonsumerist consumers. So, yeah, I was leery about the hype,
steeling myself for yet another twisted grimace of vanity. And I was glad
to be wrong. Whether Battles is original — greatly original
or successfully original or painlessly original or whatever degree of
originality the bigger, fatter talents presumably pull off — stopped
mattering to me about 15 seconds into “Race: In,” Mirrored’s opening cut, a cheerfully demented work song that
suggests some distant-future production of Snow
White (think “Heigh Ho” as
performed by a gang of cyborg dwarves). “Certainly there are
recognizable elements in the Battles armamentarium: prog, metal,
experimental dance music, post-punk, jazz-fusion, math-rock. To expect any
artist to create an entirely new genre out of whole cloth is clearly
unreasonable. But Battles does more than merely hybridize; it combines
existing traditions with such ingenuity, authority, and joy that the old
forms don’t seem updated so much as liberated.
Whereas Battles’ previous releases — two
EPs repackaged last year as a single set — were wholly instrumental,
almost every track on Mirrored features Braxton’s vocals, although they’re so
heavily processed that they function as another instrument. They’re
pitch-shifted and vaguely Princelike on the crypto-funk workout
“Leyendecker,” layered into a spectral Native American chant on
“Tonto,” spliced and diced as a choking gasp on
“Tij.” The musicianship is a model of virtuosic restraint;
despite the fact that all three of the band’s guitarists are
more-than-capable shredders, they mostly confine themselves to two- or
three-note figures, pungent little hooks that ricochet off one another in
glittering contrapuntal shards. Stanier, for his part, is that rare drummer
who can glide from lockstep pounding to tricky syncopation without ever
ceasing to swing. Collectively, Battles is a tightrope act, strategically
pitched between the ecstatic release of improvisational music and the
stringent precision of contemporary classical. From the postindustrialist
oompah of “Atlas” to the canaries-in-a-meat-grinder maelstrom
of “Ddiamondd,” from the rainforest nocturne “Bad
Trails” to the fairgrounds stagger of “Rainbow,” Mirrored is one big glorious
grin — not a twisted grimace in sight.
René Spencer Saller reviews new music for Illinois Times. Contact
her at rssaller@core.com.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2007.
