About This Item
Lukas Mayo didn't set out to break their laptop while making Battlebots, but in the end, the machine just couldn't take it. Files became too heavy, too unwieldy, too layered with chopped-up guitar notes, warped voice memos, and fractured drum loops. Some songs weren't finished so much as abandoned, because the computer simply refused to open them anymore. That moment felt fitting. An album about breaking apart, about friction and collapse, should probably come with a little destruction of it's own.Pickle Darling has always existed just outside of the periphery. In a heightened time of fast music, algorithmic consumption and rapid virality, Mayo has remained focused on the album. Their discography is a reflection of their creative evolution, and they deliberately look for ways to push sonic boundaries from to . Since debuting with Bigness in 2019 followed by Cosmonaut in 2021, Mayo has curated a catalog that is deeply personal and strangely tactile, where tiny, unexpected details-an off-kilter loop, a whispered aside, the warmth of an old Casio-become as crucial as melody itself. Their 2023 LP Laundromat was a precise and polished expansion of that world, a record that felt like it had been carefully placed behind glass. It garnered praise from Mojo, Rolling Stone Australia, The Line of Best Fit, and led to a live performance on the beloved New Zealand children's TV program, What Now.Battlebots, by contrast, is unruly and full of static a collection of songs that feel like they could only ever exist on scratched CD-Rs passed between friends. Self-recorded in their home studio in Christchurch, New Zealand, Battlebots finds Mayo taking a scalpel to their own songwriting. Instead of simply playing guitar, they recorded each note individually, then arranged them one by one. Songs were stretched, chopped, reversed. Some ideas started as Inchunlistenable garbageInch befo
