The Battles - La Di Da Di - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Vinyl LP pressing housed in a gatefold sleeve includes poster and booklet. Battles return with Juice B Crypts on Warp Records to follow their complex, mind-bending predecessors Mirrored, Gloss Drop and La Di Da Di. Their latest album is a sensory overload of information that throws everything you thought you knew about Battles into flux once again. Battles' redefined line-up puts Ian Williams (keys, electronics) and John Stanier (drums) at the core of the covertly named Juice B Crypts, which was produced and mixed by Chris Tabron (Trash Talk, Mobb Deep, Ratking). Marrying synthesizer loops, cut-throat drum patterns and cyclical riffs, the album flirts with new technology, questions of authenticity and the technicalities of reinventing the wheel at the eleventh hour.

2014 4X vinyl LP pressing reissue of the 2003 collection. Anthology serves as a celebration of The Clean, a band whose influence extends so far beyond their New Zealand home that even if you have never heard of The Clean before, you have surely heard of some of the bands (Pavement, Yo La Tengo, and Superchunk, to name a few) who have been influenced by their unique blend of homemade garage rock, hook-filled melodies, and psychedelic experimentalism. The Merge tag celebrates it's 25th anniversary with this essential collection on vinyl.

MIRRORED, the long awaited third album from New York quartet Battles, has proven to be well worth the wait. A complete eclipse of their earlier work, MIRRORED embodies all the prior ideas and qualities that have surrounded the group and extrapolates exponentially upon them. The fractured rhythms, crystalline staccato guitar lines and throttling drums still remain. New textures and horizons become attainable through the addition of focal courtesy of Tyondai Braxton, though the vocals certainly aren't what one would expect. Creatively applied and manipulated through various forms of technical expertise, the addition of these vocals evoke qualities of a completely new and innovative instrument, with or without the use of lyrics.