BATTLES
MIRRORED
WARP
WORDS: ALEC NIEDENTHAL

If Aphex Twin's music is what a machine sounds like when it records itself dancing, then Battles is the sound of a cabal of robots recording themselves manipulating those machines to make them dance. Their mathematical synchronicity is algorhythmic: booming bass accentuated with quick, skittering beats and Alvin and the Chipmunks-manipulated voice samples that fit together with the robotic efficiency of a dancing Iron Giant.

"Race In" begins with fluid symmetry that ebbs and flows like liquid mercury down a sluice, pouring out of its first second with a motorik-tick-tick-tick and a techno-prog guitar riff. The song eventually evolves into an entirely different beast via flickering keyboards, lightning-quick guitars and impossibly complex rhythms. "Atlas," Mirrored's first single, is a similar amalgam of complex motorik beats, chipmunk vocals and infectious, proggy guitar, resulting in a veritable carnival of sound that can only be described as a weird techno-fueled collision of math- and progressive-rock.

"Leyendecker" is an anomaly in Battles' tightly-crafted machine of an album; it's a warped-to-hell-and-back math rock version of a Top 40 sex-soaked gangsta rap song. Try to resist listening to it with the windows down and the bass cranked all the way up. It segues nicely between the album's more techno-influenced first side and the dynamic, complex second half. "Rainbow," the album's longest song and its highlight, constantly and jarringly shifts between moods quirky and cerebral. It ends with perhaps the strongest three minutes on Mirrored: a wall of whimsical beats and chirps that convulses, combusts and crescendos to a peak, followed by a minute-and-a-half d?©nouement of reverb-drenched vocals, synths and guitars, completely devoid of the self-aware but endearing quirkiness that runs throughout the rest of album. This drastic shift in tone engenders more atmosphere and less chipmunk-ness.

"Tij" is blazingly fast, and its jazzy, almost Middle Eastern textures are reminiscent of multi-instrumentalist Tyondai Braxton's father, composer Anthony Braxton. Similarly, Don Caballero's influence is visible on the tightly-woven "Bad Trails," driven by ex-Don guitarist Ian Williams' electronically-manipulated noodling.

But the real meat of Mirrored lies in its composition: how it comes together, the hidden lines and subsurface irregularities that make it flow the way it does, and the reaction it elicits from listeners. "This is kind of boring and repetitive, but I can't stop listening to it." By this point, you're a prisoner of the machine. And make no mistake, Mirrored is a machine through and through. It twists and turns and pumps with laboratory precision, making the entire album a fascinating mechanized blur. It's a visceral yet inarticulately bizarre experience: we find laptops projecting skeleton-dry drum machines while the chipmunk choir chirps- and it happens eleven times over. But, somehow, those eleven tracks transcend their individual peculiarity and achieve coherence. The result is an engaging (though sometimes self-indulgent) listening experience that, because of some ineffable, intangible quality, hooks you from "Race In" to "Race Out," and doesn't let go until you've been pumped and churned and pulled through the machine.