La Di Da Di

Ever since their first handful of EPs almost 10 years ago now, it's never been
quite clear how Battles created their music let alone what their intentions were in
doing so. "Did they just improvise that whole song?" "What instrument is this
even played on?" "How the hell is the drummer keeping up?" What did shine
through however was a certain perfectionist professionalism, the results of which
are consistently manifested in a surprisingly infectious strain of math rock
experimentalism.
Battles' newest record, the aptly titled 'La Di Da Di', aims for the same thrills of
its predecessors but this time stripped back the vocal arrangements and focusing
much more on the repetition. Not only have the returned full force, but have
placed a heavy emphasis on the electronic elements of their sound. You merely
need to look at the song titles to know how this album sounds, with 'Dot Net' and
'Dot Com' equally sounding like a sentient, music producing computer. John
Stanier as always provides his earth-shattering, near-impossible drumming as
the backbone of Battles' sound, but Ian Williams and Dave Konopka seem to be
acting as a united force throughout. In Ableton's short feature on the band, the
band talked about the proverbial butting of heads that went into making their
records, but their dynamic on 'La Di Da Di' suggests a band fully in sync with
each other's improvisation - "a three-head cyborg" as their biography states.
However, despite not being their longest release, the album starts to drag in
places, particularly in the middle with tracks like 'Cacio e Pepe' and 'Tyne Wear'
feeling more like interludes than the pithy powerhouses of vibrancy that they
achieved with 'Ddiamondd' and 'Dominican Fade'. The problem seems to be in
the lack of certain songs mutation. One of the many reasons that Battles are so
enjoyable is their ability to dismantle songs and reshape them in a new form (see
'Atlas'/'White Electric'), but the heavily repetitive focus this time misses out on
this structural form, creating songs that merely layer ad infinitum. If it is not the
overall length of the music then, it is the constant melodies and tempos found
throughout the songs themselves that causes the drag.
Overall, 'La Di Da Di' manages to reach giddy heights of manic fun that
encapsulate Battles as a band 'The Yabba' and 'FF Bada/Luu Le', for example, but
unlike their previous efforts these moments aren't nearly as common.
Fortunately however, thanks to the phenomenal ability of Williams, Konopka and
Stanier, the album sounds like an album that only Battles could make, worming
its way into your head by creating compositions unlike anything else heard by
humanity.
7.3/10