| Battles/The Astoria/14 May 2008 |
| Written by Ed Whatley |
| Wednesday, 18 June 2008 13:55 |
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VIDEO
What an odd idea. It's glorious outside, maybe the last glorious day of a glorious ten day burst of sunshine and drinks in the park and summer memories stored in photos you'll ache over in another decade. But I'm inside. Inside a cavern. A cavern full of other people. Who are hot. Who are sweaty. Who are doing a bad job of sneaking drugs past the doormen. ("Come on, swallow. You can't, your mouth's too dry. Come on.") Who are pressed up en masse, having been there for one or two hours, cooking and sweating. Thousands of people have swapped the chance to not look stupid in shorts for this black, smelly cattle market. What an odd idea.
I see the end of the Dirty Projectors set, who are a good idea, so far as I can tell as I scrabble about for somewhere to fit my frame in. I like this new generation of bands who like Talking Heads. They seem good hearted. I will go on the internet and find out more about them some time soon. Good. Battles gear starts to get shifted about. There's a lot of it, but it is economically placed. The economical drum kit (Big Cymbal, Bass Drum, One Tom, One Snare, One Floor Tom) is pushed to the front of the stage. Flanked by one set square array of keyboard, mac and boxes, all taped and shaped for ease of use not show. On the other side a bright red keyboard topped off with damaged android wiring and lighting. Behind them are four stacks of amps, standing square behind the instruments like Easter Island heads. As soon as Dirty Projectors are off this Battle and that Battle come on and start poking around with their kit, calmly wiring everything up just so. This is a great touch, a sort of techy, shy showmanship, a peak behind the curtain and an egalitarian and exclusive touch - "No-one else can set this stuff up, but I'm happy to do it while the roadies plug in the amps." I bet Battles really worry whether they turned all the plugs off when they go on holiday. I am getting extremely fed up and wondering why I am in a baking hot room listening to some nonsense industrial whingeing on the soundman's mixtape. Then a Battle walks out. Grinds out a warping bass riff on the bottom two strings of his guitar. Loops it. Plays over it. Loops that. Plays over it. Loops that again. The rest skip on stage, looking just as excited as the front row. They latch on to the loop and start building over it, and the whole building starts to jitter with them. They have a great drummer, but they're all drummers, just not necessarily playing drums. Everything they do has a function, and an almost physical form. They make the sound of running, the sound of effortless complexity, where the body and mind are doing something requiring a million signals and adjustments and everything has to be done at speed and in harmony. There's no frowning or distance with these boys though. This is a communion, a method of communication with no real message other than to make you move. Like James Brown or Otis taking gospel shapes and making them move your hips, they take the puritanical, sexless aesthetics of boy-rock and recast it as a motor to drive your unspoken self. There's tunes, too. Well, everything is a tune. Everything's a hook. There's no uncomfortable push/pull. Everything's a pull. Everything is trying to make you feel. It's jarring when one of them speaks to the crowd, thanking them for making it a great night and letting us know that the album that brought us here, Mirrored, has its one year anniversary that day. They have hits, too. Instrumentals that get the crowd wooping in anticipation. 8 minute epics that seem like they're finished before they started. Everyone in the crowd wishing they had the chutzpah to dance on one foot while playing piano with your right hand and skittering over frets with the left. Battles thank us for being part of a great night. And everyone is. Part of the currents and eddies of the music, part of the fun, part of something unique and universal. I briefly consider buying a band t-shirt, realise it's all a bit neon for me nowadays, and skitter off down Charing Cross Road singing odd snatches of drum riffs and delay loops to myself. MYSPACE
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