In the lead-up to Battles’ second LP,Gloss Drop, the band found itself down one member, with vocalist Tyondai Braxton leaving midway through the process.
Although Braxton had played a key role on Battles’ first album, Mirrored, the remaining three members persevered and created an excellent release that featured guest vocalists on four songs. However, despite Gloss Drop’s success, the future still looked uncertain. Undeterred, Battles returned last year with their third record, La Di Da Di – their first entirely instrumental album and their most consistent effort to date.
According to guitarist and keyboardist Ian Williams, La Di Da Di’s instrumental constitution wasn’t such a stretch. “In a way, on Mirrored the surprise was that we actually made an album with some singing on it, because the stuff before had been instrumental [EPC and B EP, both in 2004]. So it was like, ‘Oh, there’s singing. Surprise.’ Then I think on Gloss Drop we felt like, ‘Oh, other people are singing. Surprise.’ La Di Da Di, it was like, ‘Oh, we made an instrumental record again and there’s no singing. Surprise.’
“There are a lot of ways we can be ourselves, and what Battles can be. We didn’t have to do it this way, but it felt good to make an instrumental record and have a little more space in the music.”
There is a wonderful amount of space to the album arrangements, deployed with resolute comfort by Williams, drummer John Stanier and guitarist/bassist Dave Konopka. At the same time, not only is the playing tight and technically proficient, but everything on La Di Da Di is precisely produced. It goes without saying that the songs don’t always come together as comfortably and spaciously as they finish up.
“With our older material, it was like traffic conducting,” says Williams. “It was like figuring out traffic patterns and, like, ‘Well, this has to go here, therefore this has to pull back to make room for it.’ It was about how to fit all the stuff in. I think [on] this one we didn’t have to worry about that too much. There was more opportunity just to let the thing play itself out; let the melody figure out what it was. It used to be like more point-counterpoint, back and forth like an argument. This one was like, ‘Let’s just see if it’s interesting in and of itself to let a line play without the thesis-antithesis thing going on.’ We would always set something up to sort of wreck it – like, ‘Here’s a nice little thing,’ and then we’d have something step on it. This was just trying to let things flow a bit.”
It’s a cliché to say, but Battles are exemplars of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. On La Di Da Di, there’s equal importance assigned to all three members’ contributions, as opposed to one person’s input taking centre stage. Internally, the songs came together without having to nominate a creative director.
“I’ve always liked the idea of music that was about relationships between parts – you can feel the bass and the drum together, and the guitar, and it’s all locking together. The inner movement of machine parts together, functioning to create the whole. I like that harmony that gets found when things coexist withoutthe leader. People often find that they find more emotion and meaning in music when there’s the lead singer telling you a story about his girlfriend who left him, or when there’s the guitar solo with the guy wailing on a single note. But I find there’s nice emotion, actually, in a relationship between parts, which is a little more abstract emotion.
“The band functions like a creative democracy or something like that. We try to make it so that everybody’s into a jam, into the vibe of something, and we build something off of that. It’s confusing.”
Confusion mightn’t seem like the most practical songwriting accomplice, but Williams values the element of mystery it brings. “I’ve often felt if the process is too simple, the results I come up with are too simple. I find it’s interesting to feel like you’re just on the edge of disaster a lot. Like, ‘I’m not sure if this is going to work or not.’ It means you’re truly exploring as opposed to doing that thing you know you know how to do.”
On the subject of exploration, given La Di Da Di is completely instrumental and there’s a jazzy sense of adventure permeating the record, Battles might be expected to be a jam band onstage. However, their studio recordings contain plenty of essential elements that are preserved in the live show.
“We stick to the album versions as a blueprint. We do jam a little. But, at least in the United States, [the term ‘jam band’] has a lot of connotations of the Grateful Dead and Phish and all the bands in that world. Like, ‘As long as it’s got a beat and I can shake my hips to it and take drugs it’s fine with me.’ I really don’t think that’s the kind of trip we’re on. I feel like we’re still this punk band that’s evolved from that family tree, like a few decades down the branch. Our excursions are still this more focused aggression, as opposed to just taking acid and going for it.”
La Di Da Diis out now through Warp/Inertia, and Battles playLaneway Festival 2016 atSydney College of the Arts on Sunday February 7, then Manning Bar on Wednesday February 10.
