Battles - “The Yabba” and “FF Bada”
“Robot Rock” may be a Daft Punk song, but no band fits that description quite like Battles do. Since their 2007 debut album Mirrored, Battles have been blurring human and machine together in synth-infused blasts of experimental rock music. Tyondai Braxton used to be at the forefront of their rainbow-coloured sound, his voice warped digitally into an alien croon. Give “Atlas” a listen and tell me you don’t feel an X-Files unease creeping up your spine.
“The Yabba” and “FF Bada” are the first two tracks made available from Battles’ third album, La Di Da Di. If that sentence sounds like a nursery rhyme, I’m sure Battles intended as much. La Di Da Di marks the second album without Braxton’s distinctively processed voice guiding the way. Last time around on Gloss Drop, the three remaining members of Battles filled in his vacancy with more squiggles of cartoon guitar, shimmering keyboards and thumping drums than ever before. Guest vocalists such as Gary Numan and Yamantaka Eye were brought in to further enrich the fluorescent bacchanalia.
If “The Yabba” and “FF Bada” represent the album as a whole, La Di Da Di is set to be Battles’ first purely instrumental LP. “The Yabba” begins with a deceptively grand introduction, its brooding portents of synthesizer seemingly setting the stage for something spectacular. When the curtain finally lifts, there isn’t much catharsis to be had. Instead of the extravaganza promised by this opening, “The Yabba” opts for a meandering krautrock groove interwoven with doodles of synth. The song has as many false endings as The Return of the King, repeatedly slowing to a complete halt and then starting back up again. As gorgeous as some of the sounds are that cascade past, “The Yabba” feels more like a rough draft than a finished track.
There is much more focus and momentum to “FF Bada”. Its feverish riffs and dense layers of twitching percussion recall some of the more angular moments of Mirrored. The vivid imagery “FF Bada” evokes is quintessential Battles, all garish flashes of bubblegum and trampolines and things wrapped in cellophane. But the fact “The Yabba” sounds like a pop-prog cut from Gloss Drop and “FF Bada” like the finicky math-rock of their debut doesn’t suggest a huge leap forward for Battles soundwise. Heck, even the queasy food sculptures of the artwork for La Di Da Di evoke some of the imagery used for Gloss Drop. Hopefully Battles still have some surprises for us up their sleeve.
