Battles
Mirrored
Warp Records
#7. Mirrored
by Battles
This mostly
instrumental album is more fascinating than lovable — but it's pretty
damned fascinating. For one thing, it sounds a lot like... fractals.
Ex-Helmet drummer John Stainer kicks Atlas off with a pattern that
expands and loops around itself in ways that feel logical, but not
natural, while the wordless "vocals" (at least they sound human) hum and
whistle and bleep until they gradually congeal into a killer riff. Tonto
swings a bit more straightforwardly but still sounds as if it's being
beamed from space. If a few years from now it's discovered that Mirrored
was a program written by an MIT student that allowed computers to
express themselves, I wouldn't be at all surprised.