Gang Gang Dance / Black Dice / BATTLES, Central Park Summerstage

Part III-
They came on stage in business causal -button up shirts, dress jeans and dress shoes- amongst a crowd of band shirts, ripping skinny jeans and Keds. The infamous yellow drum-set sat at the front of the stage, with the cymbal set a few feet above the rest of the set, carefully mic-ed. It was refreshing to know that while I waited a year to see them, not much had changed.

The preciseness of the drummer and the energy he exuded was almost frightening at times. I watched carefully as his shirt became exponentially sweatier, and only a few minutes into their set, sweat had eaten every dry spot on his button up. The drummer's preciseness is particularly interesting when juxtaposed with the sound technicians' sloppiness. While Battles played, they all but begged for someone to come out and fix the broken connections and wires, and despite the disappointment on their faces and the very audible glitches, no one came until it was virtually too late. "Race:in" actually screeched to a halt, and the band scrambled to reconfigure their rigs. So, uh, what's the point of a soundcheck, again?

Live, Battles’ music lacks compexity, and the mathematical precision that defined their album, Mirrored, despite the drummer's intensity. Precision is needed, however, for music with such brief, heavily layered phrases that are passed around, broken down, and then built back up all in a matter of seconds. Part of the fun of seeing Battles live is being able to discover who actually plays what part, and to witness how they communicate and interact onstage. You can visibly see phrases being passed between the musicians, see them get broken down, and then built back up. But this is no easy feat; most of the band play multiple instruments at a time, and loop phrases so often and heavily it's difficult to remember what was originally played. Tyondai, (“singer”, keyboardist and guitarist) does a sort of interpretive dance as he plays, kind of emulating a recently greased and programmed robot (and I mean that in the best way possible, seriously); he embodies the simultaneous fragmentation and collective synergy of Battles' music.

While Tyondai was dancing, the drummer was sweating and the rest of the band was playing until their brains exploded into millions of pieces like shards of glass (the mirror reference is obligatory), the crowd stood motionless, much to the chagrin of the anti-hipsters. “It’s Battles, fucking dance!” Their pleas were eventually answered in the middle of "Atlas". “Atlas” began in a much higher key that made it impossible to recognize at first, but a few minutes into the song, not even at a significant change in the music, the crowd went absolutely ape-shit. It was as if someone bumped into some magical 'crazy switch'. I couldn’t breathe and police dragged at least one guy out of the crowd. Both the po-po and the crowd-goer disappeared instantaneously.

Three minutes later, as if nothing had even happened, Battles let the crowd down gently. That's precisely what Battles does best live- they aren't afraid to really end a song: rests, patience, space and all. The crowd listened to every ending note and then continued as perfunctorily as before. Not only did the crowd stand silently, but semi-dormant, not dancing or even moving for the entire rest of the show. Somewhere between sickeningly tame and sickening energetic, I was hoping the crowd would find a happy medium. They never did, but I enjoyed the show anyway. Where else do people sing along to songs with no words or take the time to decipher the most undecipherable of lyrics?

On the topic of undecipherable lyrics... I was hoping to hear “Ddiamondd” for an encore. I even memorized all of the words- yes, Tyondai IS speaking English, here is proof. A couple others in the crowd shared my hopes, and screamed for them to play it. Tyondai just looked into the crowd- "I wish I knew how to play that song." I would have found his response more clever had they played the song anyway. Instead, Battles played “Bad Trails”- an odd choice for an encore. While most bands leave their hits for the very end, Battles chose to leave one of their least recognizable, least popular songs (according to my unsubstantiated assessment of Battles' fanbase) for the encore. I'll take this as proof that they have incredible confidence in the oddness of their music. Not to mention, of course, that they should have just listened to me and 'learned' how to play "Ddiamondd".