Battles

To the Next Level

By Leo McGovern

10.27.08

In the years since Battles released their first EP, 2004’s Tras, the band has fought against compartmentalization, both with media outlets shoving them into strict labels (such as “math rock,” like keeping time isn’t a basic part of playing music and crafting songs is all about formulas that anyone could complete) and their own tendencies as musicians. When their first full-length record, Mirrored, hit in 2007, one of the noticeable differences from their earlier work was the extended use of keyboardist/guitarist Tyondai Braxton’s voice, which eschewed lyrics while sounding like anything from a chipmunk to Max Headroom. When Antics called David Konopka, he was home in Brooklyn, taking a break before hitting the road for a few festival dates. While for some bands time on the road that means dabbling in writing new music, don’t look for a new Battles record quite yet. They’re in the beginning stages of writing, but for Battles writing is like “Trying to fit square pegs in round holes to see what works,” according to Konopka. However long it takes, you can rest assured that Battles will take their sound to another level—if only their gaming doesn’t get in the way.

What does Tyondai’s voice add instrumentally to Battles? It’s not your traditional singing.

Before we recorded Mirrored, he did some beatboxing on our previous EPs, using the voice as an instrument. We didn’t want to pigeonhole ourselves as an instrumental band, so we worked the vocals into the mix. It was really important to us that we weren’t all of a sudden just a band with a lead singer. In Tyondai’s case it is just another instrument. In a song like “Atlas,” it was more conceptually based—we felt that song should have vocals on it. That was a shoot-from-the-hip type of song. There was no real decision making process about which songs should have vocals, but sometimes having that extra instrument in there ties the song together. Half the album doesn’t have any bass guitar, so it’s just using tools to convey different colors, and the voice is one of those tools.

In some songs, like “Atlas,” it sounds like instruments and noises are responding to each other, as if the song is more a conversation than a collection of sounds.

That’s kind of been one of our things since the beginning of Battles, I feel. It was always a bummer when people are finding out about you or we’d read a review and see us described as a “New York instrumental band.” Even when we were primarily instrumental, the fact that the melodies and the parts that intermingle feel like a conversation between all the players is like a mad laboratory on stage when we play. There is a relationship that exists between each of the parts and I’ve always thought of these parts as little characters that speak to each other and contrast one another. When you read “New York instrumental band” it’s discouraging because even though we didn’t have vocals it always felt like each melody was such a strong voice to me. That doesn’t even dawn on you until you start seeing other people’s perception of your band.

What are some of the differences between recording a full-length like Mirrored and the previous EPs?

The EPs were such a guerilla mission. The band started organically, with Ian, Ty and myself playing a show and a lot of different ideas passing through the band. We used to have girls making vocal noises before we realized that wasn’t practical for us. Once we stopped that, we really refined the songs to make a recording and get our name out there and tour and grow rather than be a New York band that plays the Tonic every now again.

For the EPs, Our friend Emery Daubin, who’s produced the next Travis album and works with Patti Smith a lot, was working at a studio and we’d sneak in at night to try and record from midnight to 8am, then move our stuff to the corner and whoever was really paying for the space would use it. It was never ending, and it took so long to get it mixed and so on. We were still trying to figure out how we worked as a band—it was organic.

On Mirrored, all of us gelled together as musicians and as friends. A friend of mine had just opened a studio in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and he’d recorded some of my old bands back in the ’90s. Mirrored was the opposite kind of process, where we said we’re going to make it right and make it good. We slept in an apartment connected to the studio for three months. We wanted to make it Battles 2.0. We were happy with the EPs but we wanted to convey that we were a stronger band capable of recording stronger songs.

It seems like the songs on Mirrored are more upbeat at the start—I seem to remember the EP tracks having a slow build. Was that a distinction you were trying to make?

That’s strictly based on the technicalities on some of the tools we use to build these songs. When you’re dealing with loops and stuff there’s a whole buildup process. A lot of our songs feature the loop as the foundation and it builds and builds. After playing that stuff live for awhile, it’s one thing to do it live and work your way into a song, but doing it every time it’s like, “come on, get to the point.” On Mirrored we said, “It might not sound like this live, but let’s get into the song here and we’ll work out the live aspects later.” We didn’t want to listen to someone build a loop for two minutes before the actual song starts. On the EPs the process was exposed a bit because we didn’t have a better game plan. Once you have it recorded and have seen how it played out, it’s like, “Let’s just get into it.” Yeah, we’re working with loops but they’re not the focal point, it’s just another tool that we use.

Have video games influenced your music?

[Laughs] No, not really. I hear that from time to time. It’s not a conscious influence.

Did you guys play games a lot as teenagers?

Tyondai and I are the gamers. His jam was Street Fighter II and I was a big Mike Tyson’s Punch Out guy; I always like the Major League Baseball games, but for a while both of us kind of fell off. As Battles has gotten busier, we’re exposed to more things. We got a song on Major League Baseball 2K8, and when that happened we realized we didn’t have an Xbox, so we wound up getting two Xboxes and it’s escalating. A few months ago I bought Tiger Woods golf and was like, “aw, yeah.” I’d wake up really early so I could play, drink some coffee and still get on with my day—it was a nice little ritual. Then Ty bought Grand Theft Auto and we both got Nintendo DSs, and it’s getting worse.

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