Battles – La Di Da Di

Looped, live and loving it, Battles is a band all about building expectations before diverging completely into unknown territory. Their career has been one elaborate Rube Goldberg-esque musical contraption, swapping pieces in and out without hindering or a cheapening future additions, instead making an entirely different machine working to achieve the same goal.

One of their first swaps saw the departure of Tyondai Braxton, leaving the group a vocal-less trio. And while many were wooed by Braxtons’s contributions on Mirrored, the band soldiered on, creating an album where guest vocalists performed on top of their trademark pulsing loops and progressions. La Di Da Di, their discography’s latest addition, takes those thundering loops up from the background and celebrates what they are at their very core: art through repetition.

The new cog this time around? Removing vocals entirely. Which beyond the obvious loss of an instrument, also forces listeners to remain attentive to what has always been the root of the band. That said, finding little moments and noticing subtleties isn’t just a fun activity to do while listening to tracks, it’s what makes this album special and entirely listenable. If you’re going to get the most out of your experience, you’re going to need focus, about 50 minutes’ worth. But if you can handle it, you’ll fall in love with all the minute variations drummer John Stanier places into each drum strike and get an intimate understanding of the different styles multi-instrumentalists Ian Williams and Dave Konopka bring to the table.

Each track is uniquely its own and brings with it a new gear to the Battles machine. And while this is a very similar contraption to what we’ve seen before, it’s also one varied enough to warrant our attention for numerous listens. While it might not have quite the lasting potential as their first two albums, it’s an album more than able to stand on its own. Ultimately, the dropping of vocals in La Di Da Di isn’t so much a subtraction from what has worked in the past, it’s an enhancement of what listeners have been attracted to all along.

Score: 3.9/5

 

[youtube]https://youtu.be/bkhLzHuUYmo[/youtube]

 

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