War Songs - Battles

Ian Williams is at home in New York when Gigwise speaks to him. Sounding tired, between his monotone answers he can be heard shuffling around his apartment (he’s switched to hands free after we get disconnected), opening cupboard doors as if he’s searching for lost treasure and sniffling because he’s picked up a post-winter cold. Then again, he is on a comedown as well. His band Battles –an eye-opening four-piece concocted from seminal 90’s acts – have just returned from a brief run of dates in their native US and Canada where they showcased tracks from their long-awaited debut album, ‘Mirrored.’ There’s just reason, therefore, to be feeling drowsy at 2pm on a mid-April afternoon.

The mind, body and soul draining experience that is life on the road, however, is nothing new to the members of Battles - they’ve been there, done it, seen it…you name it, all before. It’s not surprising, therefore, that the band were almost instantly labelled as a ‘super-group’ when they played their first gig as Battles at the end of 2003 in New York. While 37-year old Williams played guitar and keyboard (at times simultaneously) for the genre defining math rock band, Don Caballero, the band's other members have all spawned from equally as impressive ‘family trees.’ Vocalist, Tyondai Braxton is the son of the jazz musician Anthony Braxton; bassist, Dave Konopka was the guitarist in Lynx, and; John Stanier was the drummer for the rock band, Helmet. Surely, it’s a contradicting musical recipe for disaster? Well, at least, you’d have thought so anyway.

In reality Battles work perfectly - with all four men proving that sometimes superpowers actually can work together. As Williams reveals however, initially finding a balance to their eclectic backgrounds was an issue, albeit a fun one to overcome. “The challenge was almost like we needed to find a definition of what we needed to do. If it’s a couple of house DJ’s making a record then you know what they’re gonna do but with us I think we enjoyed the fact that there was so many different things on the table and the fact that each one of us was capable of making our own solo record,” he continues. “It was almost like making room for other people and the challenge of, ‘this fits there and that fits there.’ I think it’s been about creating a balance of, ‘ok, we’ll go there and that guy can sow that up.’”

Before Battles, Williams spent eight years in Don Caballero creating sounds that hadn’t been heard before, set to mathematical patterns that hadn’t been dreamt of before. You could certainly call him avant-garde. Yet, that’s a label you should also bestow on the bands other members – all of whom challenged the genre that they were reluctantly confined to work within. Like all great forward thinkers however, there comes a time to move on in order to fulfil ones innate need to push the sound boundaries. “I think we all kind of had that feeling. I know that John did totally not want to be in another nu-metal band or something, and for me to, I was just so tired with making that kind of music (Don Cab) – we were just trying to find a conclusion to it all because I didn’t want to pick that axe up again,” he adds. “The way I play guitar I didn’t really see another step down that path so it became a back out for myself. I think that was the great thing about playing with all these new people because they brought all these new things to the table and new directions that I would never have been able to come up with on my own.”

Although now, in 2007, they’re finally on the verge of releasing their fabulous debut album, it was in 2000 when the then disillusioned musicians first began to congregate through their collective desire to evolve. “I was playing solo guitar shows around New York and it was Tyondai who came to a show and we talked because he was doing solo shows at the time as well. He thought I should make a solo guitar record and I kinda felt, ‘yeah that would be easy to do but that just kinda feels boring to me.’ So I kept on seeing him around town and eventually I said, ‘well if you think I should make a solo guitar record then why don’t you help me and we’ll do something a little wiser.’” Whilst the loosely planned solo-project never materialised, Williams did recruit Konopka whose previous band had toured with Don Cab. The final issue was finding a drummer. Luckily, the final recruit was also searching for a new direction. “I ran into John in the street so it was just one of those things really,” laughing as he recalls the story, Williams continues. “He claimed that it (the then three-piece Battles) wasn’t very good and so it took him five or six times before he realised that he actually wanted to do it.”