"You're at a rock show on a Tuesday night. You're already successful."
-Ian Williams, guitar and keyboards
Battles performed Tuesday
evening at Webster Hall in Manhattan. I had no idea what I was getting
into, but a friend had been clamoring about this show for months. The
best way to describe the concert experience is with two words: organized chaos.
Their sound veers across a musical spectrum that is difficult to describe. So, give this a listen as you read on:
Their latest release Gloss Drop exemplifies this complex sound
(steel drums, cicada-sounding beats, manipulated vocals, distorted
guitar, and driving percussion). The band's creativity isn't limited to
their musical arrangments. Since vocalist Tyondai Braxton left Battles,
they recruited various artists to sing on the album. What other way
to bring talented (and busy) artists into a live concert than with
video? Using two large rectangular video screens we were graced with
closeups of Gary Numan, Blonde Redhead's Kazu Makino, and Matias Aguayo
singing and dancing awkwardly.
Battles goes off on tangents of experimental discord and when I'd
think they were just conducting a live jam experiment, they'd bring it
back with speedy synchronization in-tune with the flashing colors on the
illuminated screens behind them. Drum beats perfectly in-sync with
these blasts of color over the audience reminded me that this was in
fact, organized chaos.
The building dance beats of "Futura" put me into a trance in which I
actually closed my eyes for the entirety of the song (six minutes I'll
have you know, and no, I wasn't drinking).
