BATTLES INTERVIEW

Formed in New York City circa 2002, Battles originally had four members until vocalist Tyondai Braxton decided to exit the picture. Forging ahead, this year the trio -- drummer John Stanier of Helmet, guitarist Ian Williams of Don Caballero and bassist Dave Konopka of Lynx -- released Gloss Drop, a follow-up to its critically acclaimed 2007 album, Mirrored. While there are elements that clearly tie Mirrored to Gloss Drop, the overall aesthetic is a bit different.

With guest vocalists such as Blonde Redhead's Kazu Makino and Gary Numan, there's a little more pop sprinkled over it than before. The intricacies are still there, and it sounds harder than hell to recreate, but it's more accessible to the average listener. I recently spoke with Williams about starting over, "math rock" and why Twilight sucks.

ME: When Battles' first album, Mirrored, came out, it earned a "math rock" label. I wasn't too familiar with that term at the time. Had you heard it before, and did you agree with that description?

Ian Williams: Yeah, I mean it's a phrase that has been around, as far as I know, since at least 1991. When my old band, Don Caballero started, people used to call us that. I think it started off as a joke phrase. I always understood it in a light-hearted kind of way. If your band has lots of odd time signatures or is very intricate, it gets that label. I don't really take it too seriously, but people say that sometimes.

Your material is very technical and intricate. What's your songwriting process like?

Songs can always come from different places. Usually it's a guitar riff or a bass line or maybe a melody on our keyboard that sparks something. I don't know if there's anything really that special that we do. I don't know. Everybody in the band has the ability to make a lot of sound and noise. It's sort of about just painting that noise so it's not a complete car crash and it can exist on its own.

I think we always kind of struggle with finding that space and sort of aligning things in a way so that you're not too overwhelmed or it becomes obnoxious, but that it's still interesting and there's still a lot going on. I don't know, I've always been into, like, call-and-response stuff like that. It's like back-and-forth ping-pong -- this guy does a phrase, and then that guy does a phrase. I guess that sort of ties the musicians together.

How did Don Caballero prepare you for Battles, so to speak?

That band, I mean, it was sort of a different band, but towards the end of Don Cab, the last record we made was called American, in 1999. At that point, I started using a loop pedal. I was putting phrases into it and then putting the amp behind the drummer and playing a repeated loop over and over again, usually just a guitar riff. That formula carried over into Battles, and so when Battles came together, we started doing that. At least from my own personal past into this band, that was the precursor to what Battles started out as.

Mirrored received a lot of positive feedback when it was released. Did you feel there was a ton of pressure to top that record?

We always sort of wanted to make another record if we thought it would be good. It was, in a way, just trying to block out any idea of expectation from people, like simple instinctual matter of pace, I guess. We were having trouble on this record. We knew we couldn't repeat something like Mirrored. I don't think we could have turned that kind of thing into a formula and repeated it.

When we made this record, it was three years later, and it was sort of a matter of, we were in different places at that point and had a new thing again. Even before Mirrored, we put out three separate EPs, and if you listen to those up to Mirrored, there's a pretty big sonic change.

Was Mirrored all composed before going into the studio?

That was definitely composed. We played those fucking songs a million times on tour for quite a while [laughs].

Is it hard to translate the album material to a live setting?

I think we do an okay job. I think we're usually a pretty good live band. If you have a heavy drummer like John that's the backbone, it can't be a bad show. All of a sudden, everything just kind of gets better.

There was there a fairly large gap between albums. Why the delay?

It was a little bit that we toured for almost too long. We toured for two years and played a lot after Mirrored came out. We just kept accepting more shows because it was quick, easy money, but that kept putting off when we actually sat down and wrote another record. When we finally did sit down, it was such a radical change from constant touring, it felt like a new experience like, "Oh my god, we're just sitting in a room alone with a piece of paper again." We hadn't been in that position for so long that it felt kind of alien.

So it was kind of like you were starting over?

Yeah! It was like we're not just automatically playing these songs. Sitting up in a room with no rules as how it was going to happen was hard. Then a member left. The member leaving kind of sped things up at that point. I think he was having an extra hard time coming up with material, which kind of slowed us down, so then we he actually took off, the three of us kind of refocused and made the record rather quickly.

The single "Ice Cream" sounds a bit different than the stuff off of Mirrored. How did you go about selecting the guest vocalists?

The thing for "Ice Cream," this guy Matios Aguayo, who is more of a techno DJ, is on it. He's Chilean, although he grew up in Germany. He tried an idea on the song, and I think we instantly kind of liked it. He sings in Spanish, and we were like, "Whoa this song is in Spanish all of a sudden!" It was a nice surprise. It reminded us of a Tropicalia vibe, like late '60s. It brought us to this place where I don't think we'd been thinking of, but it was kind of the perfect element to the song. He plays live with us, too, sometimes.

It's pretty interesting that you got Gary Numan on "My Machines." How did that happen?

He was a little more in the category of somebody we never imagined would be on the record. It was more in the vain of "wouldn't it be crazy if we could get Gary Numan on our record?" It wasn't like, "Oh our friend Gary Numan is going to be on our record." So that was a little more of an outside shot, but you know, somebody contacted somebody, and eventually, we heard he was interested and wanted to hear the song. He liked the song, and he went for it. He keeps saying he's going to play some shows with us.

Then Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead is on "Sweetie and Swag." We were friends previously. We knew her a little bit because she's from New York City. We knew we wanted to work with a woman on a song. It sounded like an interesting proposition. We're kind of a guy band, and it felt like a welcome change. It kind of softens it up.

Are you familiar with Little Dragon?

Is that the one guy that crawls around on the floor?

[laughs] No. You should check them out. They're a band from Sweden with an amazing female vocalist. Kazu's part kind of reminds me of her.

Oh, I definitely will.

Who are some of your influences?

I don't know. I think everybody [laughs]. This new band from Chicago called Dead Rider.

I read that you guys did a song for that movie Twilight. Be honest: Do you hate Twilight as much as I do?

Do we hate it? Yes, yes we do [laughs]. We did it because we were told it was, uh, whatever. People were telling us to "do it, do it, it will be great exposure." I don't know. It happened because the director of the movie was a fan of Battles, but the process was draining. We made it in a regular studio. It was kind of ridiculous. They were like, "Oh that's an amazing song," and then five days later they would say, "unfortunately we can't use that one. We need more lyrics."

At a certain point, it felt like they were writing the song for us. It felt like we didn't have any dignity at that point. But we had already spent several weeks trying to do this stupid thing, we just didn't care anymore. We were just like, "Whatever! If you don't like it, come play it yourself." I definitely got a sniff of the Hollywood committee. It was twenty people in suits. Although I wear a suit jacket on stage now because I play piano.

So you're more sophisticated now [laughs]?

Playing the piano is a more sensitive, sophisticated job.