Album Reviews
Battles: Tonto + EP
Battles
Tonto + EP
(Warp Records)
Battles are not so much a band as they are an assembly line of interlocking guitar and keyboard rhythms, piston pumping drums and transmogrified vocals building math-rock songs one note at a time. On the new Tonto + EP, Battles offers up their track “Tonto” off their first full-length album Mirrored, to various electronic artists to reverse engineer their musical contraptions and rebuild them. Four Tet and The Field’s remixes deconstruct “Tonto” to its bare elements—a single guitar chord diced up or a mangled vocal snippet—but infuse the driving kick drum that is the engine of electronica. Although uninspired rap remix of “Leyendecker” pollutes an otherwise good song, the EP’s live cuts give a slice of Battles’ frenetic performances. The bonus DVD, however, gives real access to the extreme musicianship of Battles’ control room on the visionary video for “Tonto,” which with the help of Warp Films and light artists UVA, illuminates the band’s performance in a darkened quarry as dusk turns to dawn.
-Drew Tewksbury (Flaunt Magazine 2007)
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