Rooftrampler92

Nietzsche who does not argue cannot be tolerated... He practically spent his entire life giving an (ir)rational explanation for the existence of man, even becoming mad in the grip of hysterical attacks, and you shovel shit on him, prejudging and presupposing what you say (he hasn't even finished reading the book, then). I don't know if this is a joke, but if it is, there’s little that is funny about it.

Nice mention, I only know this album by reputation.

Yes, with my little shepherd and the shepherdess ;D

Certo, inviami pure il testo e procederò con la traduzione.

I liked it, the second part is skippable and boring, but tracks like "Hunter" (also quite redundant) and "Bloodhail" are great pieces. As far as I'm concerned, it's the best of 2008, precisely because it's the best among the worst. I had this same discussion with Lux on the other review of "Deathconsciousness," and honestly, I don't feel like repeating it.

Yes, said like this in the end we can say that the Battles are part of that great artistic key which is progressive art, that is to take the classic and reshape it, molding it into something modern. Yes, in the end, it would all add up. It’s the same argument one would make regarding the early Pere Ubu that you mention. However, that was a different time when something new could flourish and "The Modern Dance" is the blossomed flower; the problem remains the same: today there is a drought on a creative level, and there's speculation in progressive/avant-garde tastes to shape creatures like those of the Battles, also a bit to feel safe from all critique. But all in all, nowadays this could be said about thousands of bands, so it’s something that shouldn’t be taken into consideration.

It's an almost indescribable speech in words; in fact, on a linguistic level, what I've said is almost disgusting :D

Well, let's not exaggerate; I still consider them, broadly speaking, derivative and very technically disciplined. That doesn’t mean they leave everything to technique; they definitely have ideas. In fact, I also like the application of the vocals, but to say it’s something that has never been seen before is a bit laughable. Come on, tracks like "Diamondd" and "Leyendecker" wouldn’t be out of place, just to say, on an album like "Toxicity." I’m the first to say that what Battles does is a type of music that’s almost indefinable, but in its indefiniteness, it not only has spontaneity while being elaborated music, but it remains rooted in a way of making music that is math. You’d be absolutely right to say that even though they are math in every sense, they are very distant from a band like Don Caballero, but they can still be defined as math, even while being almost indefinable in how they apply themselves to math.

"Mirrored" is not bad, but it feels cold to me as I mentioned above, a characteristic of math. As a peculiarity, I repeat, the Battles have it, but these are not singular features that make a big splash; they are there to embellish (or to brutalize, depending on tastes) the album. And then all these Dadaist intentions (I also read the (double) review by easy cure, it’s an interesting interpretation, but perhaps a bit too imaginative) I don’t really see them. I’m linking an interview with the group: Battles :: Le interviste di OndaRock and there, as I thought, the group highlights their simple ambitions. Of course, it’s music that, if interpreted by someone else (like easycure did) with a different hermeneutic key, could (perhaps) be more useful than it is.

Look, at least as I see it, "Mirrored" has had an enormous critical momentum, and this weighs, in my opinion, on the overall perception of it. The music of Battles, especially in "Mirrored," is complex, difficult, carefully crafted, and as much as it may seem like hearing the fundamentals of a post-rock without too many pretensions, that's exactly where one goes wrong. It’s an album that has a stripped-down instrumentation regarding melody, but the rhythm is really complex stuff; it’s technical and instrumental discipline, and it’s here that I find a flaw among many in an album. When you focus too much on discipline, you often forget the suggestiveness and the expressive necessity, which I find in all math, or at least in almost all of it, but this is a subjective observation. Aside from that, I wanted to highlight the characteristics that, in my opinion, a band like Battles has, and that’s why I say that their music is not something super original or revolutionary, but simply a solid instrumental performance. I don’t understand, in your personal view, where you see a pure and utterly non-derivative sound in the music of Battles. I agree about the use of vocals, at least different from what is usually found, even in math (not in all), but it’s still an element that doesn’t define a movement, a culture, a genre, a style, a music that feels new. Okay, there are some singular cases; Hendrix with the guitar practically revolutionized rock guitar playing, modernizing what BB King, Muddy Waters, and Chuck Berry did. In short, I believe that once you’ve heard the music before Hendrix and after Hendrix, you immediately realize how significant Hendrix was in the way an electric guitar is played. But in the case of Battles (and "Mirrored" is an album I listened to quite a bit at a time when I was heavily into post), I don’t feel the presence of the voice so strongly to revolutionize it all with the single contribution of a new element.