Blog Director

The key word I must use to describe the show at the Music Box last Wednesday is “layered”. It was the so-called “remix culture” at its finest: danceable, sophisticated loops of vocals and instrumentals, sometimes live and sometimes electronically generated, but never once lazy or unoriginal. I was, of course, lucky enough to be seeing tUnE-yArDs, one of the most exciting recent indie projects out there and one that is, rightfully, blowing up in the biggest and best of ways.

Photo by Andrew Youssef (Stereogum).

In support of their latest album, Gloss Drop, Battles graced Los Angeles with a night of experimental rock stylings this Monday, headlining a show at Club Mayan in Downtown LA with tour-mates Walls and Nisennenmondai. The Italian electronic duo Walls opened the show. Working from a a table stacked with samplers, drum machines, effects pedals and other miscellaneous gear, they played a handful of lengthy hypnotic movements characterized by blissful ambience and textures morphing over steady electronic beats. Next came Nisennenmondai, an all-girl three-piece band from Tokyo, who pummeled through an otherworldly and upbeat set of progressive and moody instrumentals. With layered guitar loops, steady bass lines and evolving drum patterns, Nisennenmondai’s songs would typically begin with some minimal instrumentation and develop excitedly into epic freak outs (“Mirrorball”) or sometimes remained stubbornly dense with tension until a song’s anti-climactic ending (“Fans”). The openers’ bands set the mood perfectly for Battles, who are in fact co-currating the next ATP where all three bands are slated to perform.