Review & photos by Rachel Jablonski
No musical familiarity, no expectations live. It’s a rare and exciting moment to experience a live show knowing nothing of the featured band and being entirely blown away by their performance. Such was the case last Wednesday when I saw an atypical band called Battles from Brooklyn, NY at the Ranch Bowl in Omaha, NE.
Battles, featuring drummer John Stanier of Helmet and Tomahawk fame, is purely sensational with a unique style mixing live drums, bass, and guitars with keyboards serving as Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) controllers. In simple terms this means that samples and effects are created on a computer and the results are then output by a keyboard. This allows for attention-grabbing sounds and effects and endless possibilities in musical composition. On stage, Battles demonstrated their talent in utilizing this type of music technology as well as their fundamental skills on respective instruments traditional to the genre of rock music.
As a recent graduate from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln with a BS in Electrical Engineering, musical capabilities such as those presented by Battles are continually intriguing to me. Particularly due to the fact that in a team of four, my partners and I pursued a senior design project involving similar music technology resulting in our product, the Musical Instrument Conversion Interface or JAMajik for short. The goal of the project: to use an electric guitar to effectively convert the sound of a guitar to that of a completely different instrument (a violin, cello, or horn section) with minimal delay also implementing real-time sustain and volume controls. Though we ended up designing a program for note recognition and used respective instrument .wav files from sample CDs ultimately output by the sound card of a PC, we had also considered using MIDI to a control a keyboard for the exact same effect. Therefore, Battles added an extra special element for me to hear and watch.
To intently observe how these procedures are maneuvered to create well put together jams from a listening perspective added quite a thrill. The well polished instrumental display of a drummer extremely entertaining to watch, solid bass and guitars, were equally enthralling and produced pure trance inducing sound. No spoken or sung vocals involved, the band managed yet to entrap the audience with hypnotic sounds some even vocally produced. The changes in pace with steady base sounds and absorbing effects were excellent live, but very hard to imagine consistently enjoyable on disc. I shall soon see, however, as I have a copy of the Battles EP in my possession and look forward to reviewing it soon.
Wouldn't you know, when I least expect it, I appreciatively experience a great show from a band completely unknown to me. Look for Battles on the road. I hope to see them again soon.