Burn to Shine. Volume 2. Chicago IL 09.13.2004
This video is taken from Burn to Shine Vol II, a film series collaboration between filmmaker Christoph Green, ex-Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty, and curated by Bob Weston. The film documents bands playing live in spaces that are slated to be demolished. Placing them in a context relative to one another and their chosen city, and capturing forever what it means to see them up close in the most intimate of spaces.
After a four year hiatus since Mirrored, Battles released their second LP album, Gloss Drop. This is their first album as a trio following the departure of vocalist / instrumentalist Tyondai Braxton. However, they recruited some proper guests to fill-in the vocal void including: synthpop musician Gary Numan, Boredoms cult leader Yamantaka Eye, Blonde Redhead singer Kazu Makino, and Chilean born world pop disco artist Matias Aguayo.
A little more accessible than their earlier material, it’s a refined expansion sprawling with complex propulsive grooves. It is a type of music with an uniquely creative blend culminating the technological fusion of human and machine, which may very well prove the theory of singularity. Frenetic and spastic, it shifts gears over a post modern atmosphere inter-meshing machine loops with precise instrumental complexity.