BATTLES
EP C
(Arclight)
1812. Little Big Horn. Bull Run. The Network Stars. Don Caballero's final tour. Battles are when pretenses drop and hearts burst with ideas and blood. Battles are ex–Don Cab guitarist Ian Williams, ex-Helmet/current Tomahawk drummer John Stanier, Brooklyn avant-guard Tyondai Braxton, and David "Lil' Ian Williams" Konopka. EP C contrasts instrumental prowess, time changes, and lengthy songs—prog for the almost-hot, aka math-rock—with chiming carousel hooks that loop upon themselves, never escaping their gravitational orbit. For those familiar with Don Caballero, EP C is a continuation of the band's final and best album, American Don. Honky-futuristic jazz-funk dearly cradles melodies shaken from Cracker Jack boxes while thousands of Little League cleats pitter-patter on waxed linoleum. With American Don, Don Cab became Williams' band as his delay-pedaled riffs and hammered strings overcame the deliberate fractals of Damon Che's drum kit. Williams' Faulknerian (as the Ivy Leaguer in him would undoubtedly appreciate) picking re-emerges in Battles, only slightly shattered by Braxton's own pedal pranks and Stanier's shockingly precise drumming. While Stanier's work in Helmet recalled John Bonham, on EP C he repeatedly yanks his sticks from the snare to the hi hat like a marionette. Opener "B + T" cockily constricts then elongates an ice-cream-truck melody, and "Hi/Lo" confers crunk a doctorate, slowing its centerless bounce. It's white music and all, sure, but motherfuckers move. YANCEY STRICKLER
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Greensleeves Rhythm Album #50: Marmalade
(Greensleeves)
The version is the lingua franca of all dance music. To "version," in Jamaican parlance, is to reuse the same basic backing track with a new vocal and/or song on top. And with dancehall's recent American surge, even "rhythm albums" like Greensleeves'—discs devoted entirely to variations on an oft-narrow theme that would seem on the surface like exercises in pure monotony—are starting to catch on. Created by Donovan "Vendetta" Bennett and Kingston radio DJ Wayne, the "Marmalade" rhythm is less generic in the sense that it's interchangeable rather than that it sums up its genre. Over tablas, hand claps, stick percussion, and a bass part that slams on three beats and then pauses for breath, a nodding organ alternating with a pinched little keyboard on the vaguely Middle Eastern preset plays the same couple of notes. The rhythm coils and springs constantly, and its internal tension is down-and-dirty enough to bring out the unblinkingly randy side of nearly every participant, particularly Lady Saw, whose "Mr. Long John" is self-explanatory ("Don't make me beg, please"), and Tanya Stephens, whose "Pop It Off" is not about pull tabs. Thing is, the Marmalade beat is so elastic and brings out such elasticity in the people riding it that it actually holds your attention for an hour. The exception, oddly enough, is current Kingston top dog Vybz Kartel, who apparently liked it so much he reworked it twice; both "Tattoo" and "Cut Yuh Speed" are good, but they'd sound extremely similar even if their backing tracks were different. MICHAELANGELO MATOS
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