RELEASED 2015
LABEL Warp Records / Border Music
Battles are the Networked Band, or perhaps the-band-as-network. An island chain linked by a unique combination of artistry, experimentation, technology and singular focus. A three-headed cyborg that forces our aptitude for pure physical industry to flirt lasciviously with our encroaching digital reality. A band that holds computerized loops in their brains, leaves sweat on their machines and whose sonic heartbeat is almost brutally human. It only makes sense that such bastards of both the hi/low-tech worlds would look for an alternative means of communication.
‘La Di Da Di’ is the prompt, the exclamation and the riddle to hang in the air while we try to make sense of just what Battles have done now. Dave Konopka, Ian Williams and John Stanier have turned the tables on themselves this time, confronted their own ideas of what Battles is – and here on their third album, have willed an answer to that question into existence. The tangled wires and entrails of ‘Mirrored’ and ‘Gloss Drop’ have been pulled out, flung against the wall and scraped into an unruly pile to be tread upon.
As the name might imply, ‘La Di Da Di’ is a mushrooming monolith of repetition. Here is an organic techno thrum of nearly infinite loops that refuse to remain consistent. The rhythmic genus of Battles is here as ever; full frontal, heightened and unforgiving – the gauntlet through which melody and harmony must pass, assailed at every turn. “The Yabba” squawks to life, tumbling down the stairs before it finds it's own dislocated gait. The title of “Dot Net” hints at its propulsive bait-and-glitch, while “FF Bada” and “Summer Simmer” twitchily reach dizzy heights of forward-gazing no wave bluster.
Track Listing:
DISC 1:
The Yabba
Dot Net
FF Bada
Summer Simmer
Cacio e Pepe
Non-Violence
Dot Com
Tyne Wear
Tricentennial
Megatouch
Flora > Fauna
Luu Le
