Battles – EP C / B EP

I believe I have a misprint of this EP compilation. The CD labelled as "EP C" actually has "B EP" on it and vice versa. Very strange but a great collection of EPs nonetheless.

2 EPs for the price of one! That's twice the Battles and some EP C/B EP fun. Looser and more improvisational, these early works show the development of Battles. Thus, on the B EP side, the post-rock lingering of "Sz2" takes a while to settle into its groove, but even then, it continues to shift and morph. "Bttls," on the other hand, starts with pure atmospherics, but as the drums trickle in more than halfway through, it stays static until interrupted by the jittery "Dance." Sure, these tracks can veer into the aimless, like "Tras," but it's a matter of the journey, as well. EP C starts with the twitchy "B+T," which shows the direction they'll take with their first album: tighter songwriting, more defined melodic lines. Still, though, there's plenty of room for them to meander, and meander they do: from the twinkling "Uw" to the jittery tonal contrasts of "Hi/Lo." They get into an almost glitch house-like mood with "Fantasy," though things stay definitely on the minimal, percussive side. These EPs are a great harbinger of things to come.

If I had heard anything that had been done like this (a thousand times before...), then I'm pretty damn certain I wouldn't have had the 'am I really listening to this or is this a major acid flashback that I WANT to keep on going?'.
Compared to Warp's other band orientated releases of recent years, licensing Battles' two EPs was one helluva stroke of genius. Lovely minimalesque packaging too, but hey who gives a toss about what the case looks like because the real beauty, nay, the real magick lays encoded on those two shiny discs. And once one of those spell-ridden 5 inches of crystal are spinning in your CD player, then you are transported to an audio world of electronic abstraction, polyrhythms that would make Steve Reich perk up and an overall sense of composition that is so whole, complete and accomplished that you start to question if the creators of this heady aural potion are mere human beings like you and I; or if they may actually be pan-dimensional beings on a mission to transform the way we listen to this little thing called music.
I have listened to these EPs so many times now that they are imbedded on my squidgy cerebrum like sonic fossils. The layers of rhythm achieved by these guys on guitars is equivalent to a troupe of Kodo drummers, but where the drummers use their two arms to bang out a rhythm Battles utilise their ten liitle digits to twitch and pluck out noises that make your neck hairs reach for the stars. And then there is John Stanier with his improbably tall cymbal and paradoxically angelic/demonic approach to percussion that glues the electronic wash and guitar serialsim with spurts of rapid quick fire hits and solid ground trembling beats.
Indie noodling? Heard it all before? I should be so lucky.

Picking up a debut release on Warp is always exciting, but I just don't get why they bother releasing stuff like this. It's just basic indie rock noodlings without anything special about it. It's been done a thousand times before.