‘There wasn’t too much of a dynamic change actually, it was really more of a displacement after Ty left,’ Battles guitarist Dave Konopka’s voice crackled on the other end of a dodgy phone line as we settled down to our interview. Konopka was surprisingly willing to talk about the departure of his colleague and friend, Tyondai Braxton, a subject that I approached warily. The closest Battles ever got to a traditional front-man, Braxton announced he would be leaving the band midway through recording their follow up to 2007’s math-rock behemoth Mirrored.
There was a sense that feelings still run deep over their parting, however, as Konopka paused on a number of occasions to catch himself before delving too deeply into past events. ‘The chemistry just wasn’t there that was on Mirrored. We started writing the album with Ty on it and the songs just weren’t good,’ Konopka told me, describing the frustrating process of recording new material as tensions began to develop between Braxton and the rest of the band. Comfortable only to talk in vague terms about what must have been an emotionally draining process, Konopka later likened it to ‘trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.’
Rather than contributing to the band’s downward spiral, Tyondai’s departure gave Battles a fresh perspective and only served to fuel their perpetual drive to forge new creative paths, returning to the studio to start their sophomore record again from scratch. ‘To go into a campaign with Ty’s parts on the album would’ve been like building a castle on sand,’ Konopka explained the band’s motivation behind scrapping the work they had already done towards Mirrored’s successor, ‘it was important for us to rewrite the album and start representing ourselves as a three piece.’
That is not to say that the band had a well formed vision for the direction that they should take however. ‘It turned into more of a survival mode, trying to figure out where we were with the material we had,’ Konopka conceded as we discussed the somewhat rudderless state that Battles had found themselves in, ‘it took us a really long time to figure out how we were going to proceed as a three piece and move on.’
The end result is, of course, this year’s Gloss Drop, a goofy sweet-shop of an album that couldn’t betray less of Battles’ situation during its production, a ‘dark and depressing’ period in Konopka’s own words. ‘I think we were living vicariously through the upbeat sound of the songs, through seeing light at the end of the tunnel,’ he laughed as he went on to explain that the band had wanted the sound of the album to be ‘indicative of the summer of 2011, not something that represented where [they] were in 2010.’ Indeed, from its opening moments Gloss Drop is at once restless and hyperactive, packed with the humour and improvisational abandon of a group of musicians that sound like they’re having the time of their lives. Faced with such inner turmoil, Battles’ coping mechanism was to create the most unpretentiously visceral music of their career and Gloss Drop stands as a testament to the unfailing power of music to nourish and reconcile both its listeners and its creators.
Of the technical hurdles facing the band following the loss of Braxton perhaps the most difficult to overcome was the resulting lack of a confident vocalist. Although Tyondai’s abstract, processed yelps that pepper Mirrored could hardly be described as lead vocals, his charisma, and not to mention his towering stage presence, provided Battles’ often abstruse music with a much needed focal point and personality.
Battles chose to fill this void with a host of guest vocalists appearing throughout Gloss Drop. ‘It was kind of a no brainer, it was the only way we could proceed with vocals,’ Konopka recounted their decision, ‘it was too late to get another person to come into the mix and do all the vocals.’ Far from mere damage limitation however, these collaborations afforded Battles the opportunity to explore territory that had previously been out of reach: ‘with Yamantaka Eye [of Boredoms] and Matias Aguayo it was still along the lines of the way we’ve always treated vocals – using the voice as an instrument – but it was fun for us to dip our toes into more of a pop world when Gary Numan and Kazu Makino [of Blonde Redhead] came in.’
‘The songs were pretty much written when we sent out the instrumental tracks for the vocalists to demo their lines on top,’ Konopka explained the logistics of the process, ‘and even though the songs were pretty much done by the time we were giving them the tracks, we still reedited them so it would be more conducive to creating a synthesis between the vocals and the instrumentation.’ Konopka sounded positive about using this format again – ‘it’s a really nice way to collaborate with people you admire, and to get some variety’ – but was sure to emphasise that the future remains ‘unwritten’.
In fact, he was reluctant to talk with certainty about any plans that Battles may have going forward. ‘As far as a new album, that’s not even being mentioned right now,’ he laughed, understandably wary of the sudden and drastic changes the band has experienced in the past, ‘right now we’re just focusing on playing really good shows and evolving the live set.’
Throughout our conversation, a strong emphasis was placed on this concept of ‘evolution’. Battles is a living and breathing project, constantly morphing and growing as the band reworks material at live gigs. ‘It’s not about coming out of the gates with this fully polished show,’ Konopka stressed the importance he places on creative development, ‘with everything we do we allow fans into our process, be it in the way that we play live or the way that our music evolves.’ He paused before adding, getting right to the heart of what has pushed the band through to where they are today: ‘for us, it’s the process that’s the exciting part. I think it makes for a more interesting journey.’
Battles play at the HMV Forum, London on Monday 21st November.
