FEATURE: Battles

“There was lack of chemistry and we weren’t on the same page for the most part . . . ”

A band member calling it quits during the making of the all-important second album is certainly a challenge but US experimental rockers Battles pulled through to create the entrancing album, Gloss Drop.

The story, according to guitarist/bassist Dave Konopka, goes something like this. They went into the studio in May last year but weren’t gelling creatively. Vocalist/instrumentalist Tyondai Braxton unexpectedly announced he was leaving the band and, under pressure from their record label to deliver the next album but unprepared to release what they already had done, they went back into the studio and rewrote the album as a trio.

“There was a lack of chemistry and we weren’t on the same page for the most part — you could hear that in the music,” Konopka said from Glasgow where the band was playing a show that night.

“Ty’s departure gave us a lot more dynamic space to work with again. With Ty, we were just trying to make it happen and trying to make it happen isn’t the best way to do things — it would have fallen short of being worthy of the standard we expect from ourselves.

“I don’t mean any disrespect to Ty, but it was the best thing that could have happened,” he said. “The day he quit, you don’t necessarily see that, but when you accomplish something like putting together an album like Gloss Drop, you realise it was what we needed to make a good album.”

Following up their acclaimed debut, Mirrored, is no easy feat but Gloss Drop is a mesmerising listen and a hybrid of genres made all the better by guest vocalists on four of the tracks.

“A lot of the stuff that Ty was doing was trying to do the frontman thing … he didn’t want to sing on every song, but a good portion of the album had vocals and we had to lay back to make room for vocals,” Konopka explained.

“We got so used to Ty singing on those songs whether it was good or not — it was like ‘Why is there singing on this song?’ These don’t need vocals to be good.”

Techno producer Matias Aguayo brings a tropicalia vibe to single Ice Cream; Yamantaka Eye from Japanese alt-rock band the Boredoms brings an experimental twist to Sundome and what could be more interesting than some female vocals added to Sweetie & Shag from Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino?

The rest of the tracks are instrumentals, apart from a cool vocal contribution from electro-pop pioneer Gary Numan on My Machines.

“We asked Gary Numan because he’s Gary Numan,” Konopka laughed. “We never thought he’d be interested. We were recording on Rhode Island and he was on tour in the US, so we went to his show in Boston and his manager was like ‘Come in and meet Gary’ and so we went to his dressing room and he’s like ‘I heard your song and it’s really weird — I dig what you guys do’.

“And I’m like standing there nodding and smiling politely and thinking ‘Wow, Gary Numan is calling us weird — now that’s really weird’.”
RACHEL DAVISION

THE PLUG Gloss Drop is out now