The first time I saw Battles was at a music festival in Sydney where it was 42degrees and the beer was warm and you had to wait for 20 mins to go to the toilet and some guy wearing an Australian flag around his neck, like some kind of drunken redneck superman cape, had punched a friend of mine in the face because he wouldn’t kiss it. The flag that is. By the time that Battles came on I was pretty cranky and not in the mood and basically completely over standing in the sun listening to music. Not that any of that is their fault. And in the defense of standing in the sun listening to music, Battles were slightly astonishing and made the day pretty much worth it all. Except the face punching, that wasn’t cool.
That long and kind of pointless story aside, Battles’ve come a long way as a band and ended up in a kind of a funny place, if they don’t mind me saying so. Even though they’ve only just gotten finished with releasing their second album, there’s almost a hallowed reverence that music fans pay them whenever there’s any mention of them. They’re kind of like the new Bjrk or Radiohead or something in the fact that they’re just the band that everybody likes. Everybody likes Battles. There’s no point saying at the pub table that you like Battles, it’s a completely redundant statement of fact since nobody doesn’t like Battles. And while I might not be being very scientific with my evidence, the strongest bit of evidence that I can provide you is that if you sit at my pub table and bust it out that you think Battles are shit, you can find yourself another pub table. Seriously, just leave. You and your idiotic ramblings are dead to me. Dead.
Good then that headlining a massive night at Postbahnhof here in Berlin will be the exclusively non-dislikeable kids themselves, Battles. Supporting will be, the equally sparsely recorded, The Field. Stablemates to Battles at the Little Big agency and playing on the night in full band formation, the debut LP From Here We Go Sublime earned it’s place on the Pitchfork Top 100 Albums of the Decade chart and a lot of us will finally get to check it out live.
Additionally on the lineup you’re going to find London based electronica act Walls who’re more than just a favourite act of Battles, last year’s self titled debut from them scored a 9/10 from NME and took out the Electronic Album Of The Year award from love-it-or-hate-it ‘merikan magt Mojo.
Berlin’s leisure system DJs play in and under and througout all of this, rounding out the night and making it into something fairly amazing. That means it’s got you written all over it. Unless I’ve previously thrown you off my pub table, in which case you’re still dead to me. Dead.
Brand new stuff from Battles featuring the legendary Gary Numan…
