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BATTLES
LIARS
THE REDNECK MANIFESTO
VICAR STREET
DOORS 7pm
TICKETS €27 FROM ROAD RECORDS, CITY DISCS, SOUND CELLAR, SPINDIZZY & ONLINE AT www.tickets.ie/umack
www.myspace.com/liarsliarsliars
www.myspace.com/redneckmanifesto
Some bands need biographies written on them, some bands don't, yet someone still foolishly insists on writing one. Brooklyn's Battles fall squarely into the latter category. Nonetheless ...
Rising from the ether of a pop-scarred 2004, the enigmatic EP C announced Battles's arrival like a blinding succession of Morse Code strobes across an aphotic landscape. Even as a short-form debut it was clear that band members Ian Williams, John Stanier, Tyondai Braxton and Dave Konopka had established something utterly unique. Instead of the conventional band dynamic of individual players waiting for their turn to be showcased, the members of Battles are more analogous to a tangle of brain synapses all firing in time with each other.
Having served time in seminal acts Don Caballero, Helmet, Tomahawk, Lynx and The Mark of Cain amongst others, Battles draw from a sprawling range of styles and sounds and distill this erratic static into the tightest mindfuck jams to be committed to playable format. Closely following EP C, Tras/Fantasy served as another definitive dose of labyrinthine, juggernaut rhythms and equilibrium-shifting textures that would safely place the band outside the orbit of any contemporaries.
On this first pair of EPs, Stanier's drumming is like pinpoint buckshot, Williams' guitar is sharpened schizophrenia, Braxton's sound manipulations are fragments focused and Konopka's guitar is malleable granite ... which is to say, all are nearly impossible to define yet none can be ignored. Late in 2004, Battles unleashed B EP and set their cryptic marks in stone. Centered by a set of extended musical movements, B EP was a fitting conclusion to the band's inception-as-trilogy.
In 2005 Battles set off across the globe on tour with Prefuse 73 and his crack live collective, combining driving atonal grooves and bombastic improvised fury that landed them in Japan opening for The Mars Volta and establishing their reputation as one of the most exciting live acts to crisscross the globe. The sheer musical breadth of their first three EPs and the lasting impact of their live shows have left fans and skeptics alike in perplexed anticipation of their debut full-length.
May 14th 2007 will see the release of MIRRORED, Battles first album proper and a significant measure of evolution from a band that has yet to cease moving. Still entirely intact are the unflinching experimentations and metallic angles of their young catalog, but a new melodic insight has manifested itself in the form of some of their most engaging tracks yet. "Tonto" opens with and off-kilter series of chimes and chugs which are welded to a forcibly shuffling drumbeat and a foreboding chant that gives way to a soaring midsection. First single "Atlas", out 2nd of April is a verifiable anthem, unrelenting and gigantic, but never surrendering the skewed aesthetic of the band's past.
Offering insight into Mirrored, the band said: "This record is a culmination of ideas that we were working with in the past and directions in music we were going individually. It's not so much a new direction as it is taking what we've done and going in four different directions with it. I think the record is more dynamic and shows the band maturation. Being that we're more comfortable as a band the record is more fun.
We were excited to test our hands at writing songs for the record still using frame work from the EP's. We wanted to use lyrical vocals this time around to see what it would be like to have that incorperation and to push ourselves to integrate new elements that would evolve the band".
With snaking, entrancing harmonies and thundering percussive force, Battles are a distorted reflection of an entire musical diaspora ... a view of innovation and tension reverberated as a flash, mirrored.
Liars have never been a band comfortable with staying in one place for very long. Geographically, personally and most of all musically, each successive album that they release comes with a new agenda, a new heritage, a new set of reference points and a new way of thinking about music.
So, after the multimedia multi-tasking of 2006's 'Drum's Not Dead' - each track of which came accompanied with three exclusive short films - Liars have returned with their most stripped-back and direct album yet. Simply titled 'Liars', their 4th full-length (recorded in Berlin and LA and mixed in London by Erasure and Depeche Mode producer Gareth Jones) abandons the thirty minute sound collages called things like 'This Dust That Makes The Mud' of old in favour of a set of the band's most conventional and powerful songs yet - although as a band with a reputation forged on thirty minute sound collages called things like 'This Dust That Makes The Mud', Liars' recent career swerve is a delightfully surprising as ever.
Angus, Aaron Hemphill and Julian Gross - who has played drums with the band since the departure of original rhythm section Pat Nature and Ron Albertson after the band's first album, 2001's 'They Threw Us All In A Trench And Put A Monument On Top' - decided not to overanalyse the process of making their music.
"We aimed to make songs that weren't going to require a concept. We decided to work really quickly and not talk about what we were doing too much. Aaron and I wanted to write songs that spoke for themselves in a more visceral way - like when you're a teenager and things really mean a lot for you in a song. We wanted to write songs that reminded us a little of what it was like to be a teenager - so pretty much the only preparation we did was going back and listening to the bands we liked when we were kids, stuff like OMD, The Cure and Siouxsie And The Banshees."
Although Andrew and former microbiologist Aaron Hemphill met in LA (where Andrew studied photography at art school), after a stay in New York the band relocated to Berlin as a base for European touring. Hemphill and Gross returned to LA soon after Drum's Not Dead but Andrew stayed on in the German capital, where the bulk of 'Liars' was recorded at Planet Roc (sic) studios, a former East German radio studio built in the 1950s by Bauhaus architect Franz Ehrlich. After working on their songs separately in Germany and the US, Liars convened at Planet Roc for a fortnight in spanning New Year's Eve 2006/2007 to stitch together their ideas.
The band weren't balancing their interests alone, however: a friend of Andrew's from Australia, Jeremy Glover, played bass and helped record the album. "Jeremy understood where we were coming from and helped to craft the songs in the studio to help us find that visceral edge we were searching for. We wanted to make a record that would have the same impact on people as hearing, like, the Ramones for the first time did on us."
Their quest to connect on a more visceral level has succeeded. Unlike, say, 2004's 'They Were Wrong, So We Drowned', which boasted a fractured narrative based on accounts of the Salem Witch Trials,'Liars' is a set of songs only connected by the fact that no other band around could make music like this. This is an album that manages to balance the old, experimentally-minded Liars with an excitingly insidious new pop edge.
The experiment has been an unqualified success. By getting back to basics with 'Liars' the band are going back to the future.
Rising from the ether of a pop-scarred 2004, the enigmatic EP C announced Battles's arrival like a blinding succession of Morse Code strobes across an aphotic landscape. Even as a short-form debut it was clear that band members Ian Williams, John Stanier, Tyondai Braxton and Dave Konopka had established something utterly unique. Instead of the conventional band dynamic of individual players waiting for their turn to be showcased, the members of Battles are more analogous to a tangle of brain synapses all firing in time with each other.
Having served time in seminal acts Don Caballero, Helmet, Tomahawk, Lynx and The Mark of Cain amongst others, Battles draw from a sprawling range of styles and sounds and distill this erratic static into the tightest mindfuck jams to be committed to playable format. Closely following EP C, Tras/Fantasy served as another definitive dose of labyrinthine, juggernaut rhythms and equilibrium-shifting textures that would safely place the band outside the orbit of any contemporaries.
On this first pair of EPs, Stanier's drumming is like pinpoint buckshot, Williams' guitar is sharpened schizophrenia, Braxton's sound manipulations are fragments focused and Konopka's guitar is malleable granite ... which is to say, all are nearly impossible to define yet none can be ignored. Late in 2004, Battles unleashed B EP and set their cryptic marks in stone. Centered by a set of extended musical movements, B EP was a fitting conclusion to the band's inception-as-trilogy.
In 2005 Battles set off across the globe on tour with Prefuse 73 and his crack live collective, combining driving atonal grooves and bombastic improvised fury that landed them in Japan opening for The Mars Volta and establishing their reputation as one of the most exciting live acts to crisscross the globe. The sheer musical breadth of their first three EPs and the lasting impact of their live shows have left fans and skeptics alike in perplexed anticipation of their debut full-length.
May 14th 2007 will see the release of MIRRORED, Battles first album proper and a significant measure of evolution from a band that has yet to cease moving. Still entirely intact are the unflinching experimentations and metallic angles of their young catalog, but a new melodic insight has manifested itself in the form of some of their most engaging tracks yet. "Tonto" opens with and off-kilter series of chimes and chugs which are welded to a forcibly shuffling drumbeat and a foreboding chant that gives way to a soaring midsection. First single "Atlas", out 2nd of April is a verifiable anthem, unrelenting and gigantic, but never surrendering the skewed aesthetic of the band's past.
Offering insight into Mirrored, the band said: "This record is a culmination of ideas that we were working with in the past and directions in music we were going individually. It's not so much a new direction as it is taking what we've done and going in four different directions with it. I think the record is more dynamic and shows the band maturation. Being that we're more comfortable as a band the record is more fun.
We were excited to test our hands at writing songs for the record still using frame work from the EP's. We wanted to use lyrical vocals this time around to see what it would be like to have that incorperation and to push ourselves to integrate new elements that would evolve the band".
With snaking, entrancing harmonies and thundering percussive force, Battles are a distorted reflection of an entire musical diaspora ... a view of innovation and tension reverberated as a flash, mirrored.
Liars have never been a band comfortable with staying in one place for very long. Geographically, personally and most of all musically, each successive album that they release comes with a new agenda, a new heritage, a new set of reference points and a new way of thinking about music.
So, after the multimedia multi-tasking of 2006's 'Drum's Not Dead' - each track of which came accompanied with three exclusive short films - Liars have returned with their most stripped-back and direct album yet. Simply titled 'Liars', their 4th full-length (recorded in Berlin and LA and mixed in London by Erasure and Depeche Mode producer Gareth Jones) abandons the thirty minute sound collages called things like 'This Dust That Makes The Mud' of old in favour of a set of the band's most conventional and powerful songs yet - although as a band with a reputation forged on thirty minute sound collages called things like 'This Dust That Makes The Mud', Liars' recent career swerve is a delightfully surprising as ever.
Angus, Aaron Hemphill and Julian Gross - who has played drums with the band since the departure of original rhythm section Pat Nature and Ron Albertson after the band's first album, 2001's 'They Threw Us All In A Trench And Put A Monument On Top' - decided not to overanalyse the process of making their music.
"We aimed to make songs that weren't going to require a concept. We decided to work really quickly and not talk about what we were doing too much. Aaron and I wanted to write songs that spoke for themselves in a more visceral way - like when you're a teenager and things really mean a lot for you in a song. We wanted to write songs that reminded us a little of what it was like to be a teenager - so pretty much the only preparation we did was going back and listening to the bands we liked when we were kids, stuff like OMD, The Cure and Siouxsie And The Banshees."
Although Andrew and former microbiologist Aaron Hemphill met in LA (where Andrew studied photography at art school), after a stay in New York the band relocated to Berlin as a base for European touring. Hemphill and Gross returned to LA soon after Drum's Not Dead but Andrew stayed on in the German capital, where the bulk of 'Liars' was recorded at Planet Roc (sic) studios, a former East German radio studio built in the 1950s by Bauhaus architect Franz Ehrlich. After working on their songs separately in Germany and the US, Liars convened at Planet Roc for a fortnight in spanning New Year's Eve 2006/2007 to stitch together their ideas.
The band weren't balancing their interests alone, however: a friend of Andrew's from Australia, Jeremy Glover, played bass and helped record the album. "Jeremy understood where we were coming from and helped to craft the songs in the studio to help us find that visceral edge we were searching for. We wanted to make a record that would have the same impact on people as hearing, like, the Ramones for the first time did on us."
Their quest to connect on a more visceral level has succeeded. Unlike, say, 2004's 'They Were Wrong, So We Drowned', which boasted a fractured narrative based on accounts of the Salem Witch Trials,'Liars' is a set of songs only connected by the fact that no other band around could make music like this. This is an album that manages to balance the old, experimentally-minded Liars with an excitingly insidious new pop edge.
The experiment has been an unqualified success. By getting back to basics with 'Liars' the band are going back to the future.