HA!! underrated comment. Saw them in '11 in DC. My buddy that had barely heard them and agreed to come with us was literally speechless and drop-jawed for the first half hour of the show. Truly original music.
Mirrored-era Battles were a force to be reckoned with. Ridiculous songwriting, a powerful stage aura, and a fucking sublime technical talent when it came to live performance. This line-up is one of the best bands of the 21st century.
i saw this shit live at a tiny venue in milwaukee and even as a long-time don cab fan i was like "what in the fucking hell is happening omg" .... will never forget it.
When Battles is long gone as a unit as far as being a band they’re gonna be discovered by people that haven’t been born yet and be blown by the fact that this song was released in 2007 compared to let’s say 2037 standards
Yeah. I really love how tyondai does the vocals here. The snapping back and forth between the pitched up voice and his normal voice gives a really nice effect.
The strangest, most bizarre song I've ever heard and I love it. I remember accidentally seeing this episode of later with jools Holland and it definitely struck a chord with me
Still one of the most original and kick-ass pieces of proto-post-progressive-math-rock EVER recorded, and definitely a pride of the new millennium. BATTLES!
Soooo sick. Amazing drumming. John was in Helmet back in the day. Listening to the drumming on helmet I'd guess in a million years the same guy could play shit like THIS!!! Incredible!
I think it’s possibly the most complicated song I’ve ever heard, played live. You need to take into account that it took Radiohead 18 months practice to be able to Paranoid Android live………..and this is probably 5x as difficult. The bizarre timings, the loops, the fact that the beat doesn’t change for the entire song. Then take into account 2 of the musicians are playing 2 instruments, at the same time, for almost the entire song…….
To be fair, this is their sound. It's probably their most complicated one for sure, but they're used to doing this sort of thing, so it probably comes naturally for them.
lol paranoid android is such a straightforward simple templated radiohead song i doubt they spent a year and a half exclusively practicing it to be able to play it out
@@gazelle1467 You know what, I'm actually pretty sure that this is one of their easiest song. A straightforward swung 4/4 over a single chord. Of course the tapping guitars + keyboards bit isn't easy to pull off, but I think this is definitely an easier song than, say, Tonto or Race:In.
The production on the studio version is much better, for obvious reasons, this was for cable television, and obviously they didn't have all the same equipment; tyondai probably used an actual modulator on his vocals in the studio instead of a whammy pedal. Again, obvious, this is live. All that said, this is still one of the greatest live musical performances of all time. The amount of focus and attention to detail required to make these discordant sounds come together to make a slapper of a jam song in a live setting is astounding! Whenever I need to give an example of exemplary teamwork, I show this video.
Ahhh... I love the newest Battles album even if they have half the members but this will always be more satisfying and nostalgic for me than anything else any of these guys do. Don't cry because it's over smile because it happened!!
angle dangle It was quite a traumatic departure, by all accounts. They’d recorded material for the second album but after he’d left the band erased all his work from the completed tracks and re-recorded them. That’s a pretty big falling-out.
Have I heard them before??? I can't remember but ohhhhh this was/is extraordinary & wonderful & thank the Lordie Lord for musicians when they're like this!
Lol, this must have shocked the older folks watching this back in 2007; even now, there's been little experimental band coverage on mainstream media ever since.
+NoiseKidd I would agree if anyone had come up with anything remotely as original and energetic in the 8 years since it came out. Turns out it wasn't the future, it was just fucking Battles.
jemimallah honestly I agree with you, Gloss Drop was alright but it lost a lot of what Mirrored had. Their new album is still okay as well but it's not even as good as Gloss Drop.
+Mohammad Arif Anuar Nah, on this show smaller artists (which Battles were at the time) usually get to play one or two songs. Battles would probably have gotten two, but Atlas' formidable length meant they only got the one. I guess they demanded that they weren't going to be made to play the radio edit of this song. Which is obviously a great thing as it's *extremely* rare that artists play songs of this length on Jools Holland's show.
