LIVE WIRE: Battles of the band.

(Like any respectable musician who occasionally Hulks out, Tyondai Braxton of Battles starts turning green from the tips of his 'fro. © 2008 Benjamin Luk.)

10:30. Richard’s on Richards. No opener.

That’s the kind of confidence that NYC math rock outfit Battles can afford, now that they’ve spent nearly all of 2008 doing nothing but getting music critics on their side. Coming from a blessed musical background though, who could expect anything different? After all, to those who follow this kind of thing, Battles is almost a bit of a supergroup. Battles’ Ian Williams used to belong to Don Cab back in the 90’s, Tyondai Braxton is the son of legendary sax great Anthony Braxton, and drummer John Stanier used to play for Helmet, the East Coast’s heavy metal answer to the West Coast bleeding-heart alt-rock group Soundgarden in the late 80’s. (No contest, I’m afraid.) Again, Richard’s was packed balls to the wall.

For all that they’re worth, Battles is a sight to behold. Watching the sweat drip from Stanier’s face as he shreds his drumsticks into a fine sawdust, crushing your eardrums with every snare hit at the same time, is a bit like being sexually violated by Hillary Clinton. It’s like years of pent-up passive-agressiveness finally exploding out in bursts of spasmodic energy, and you don’t really have any choice in the matter of being fucking stunned, even though you’re in terrible pain. Or what about Tyondai, with his underwear model looks and fingers so rapidly tapping away on both his frets and his keys that you’re certain he’s never had anything short of his own private harem waiting for him back home? It’s a shame that the sound guys boned themselves as badly as they did on his vocals, because when he started singing the bits from “Atlas”, all we heard was everything else sounding like a Bohemian carnival trapped in a time vortex. You had to be at the far end of the bar to make anything out.

And the crowd! Jesus Christ, Battles fans are violent. Who knew that moshing was still popular for kids out of high school? You can’t blame ‘em though. Short of the asshat sound production, Battles was near goddamn remarkable.

Special thanks to Brock Thiessen of Discorder, and Erin at Timbre Productions.

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As you've probably gathered from this post, I'm finally back from China. My apologies for not being able to update the site throughout most of August. Apparently, China's quite the hard-ass when it comes to unauthorized journalism.

Stay tuned for Mogwai.